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UNITED STATES OP AMES 




ESSAYS. 



ANTEDILUVIAN AGE, 

IN WHICH ARE POINTED OUT ITS 

RELATIVE POSITION AND CLOSE CONNEXION 

WITH THE 

GENERAL SCHEME OF PROVIDENCE. 

i 



h 



\J 3by THE 

REV. W. b! WINNING, M.A. 

»» 

VICAR OF KEYSOE, BEDFORDSHIRE. 



To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in 
the midst of the Paradise of God.— Rev. ii. 7. 



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I 



PREFACE 



This attempt to illustrate the very brief notices 
which the Bible affords concerning the period 
from the Fall to the Deluge, is founded on the 
following principles : that mankind, from the 
beginning, have been actuated by the same mo- 
tives ; and that the Almighty has followed out 
one uniform plan of moral government. 

The inspired narrative of Moses presents to our 
view the institution of the primeval Church ; the 
entrance of infidelity which gradually increased 
until it became an overwhelming apostasy ; and 
the judgment of God upon a totally corrupt 
Church in the destruction of a world. This is 
our direct evidence towards a history of the Ante- 
diluvian Church. Some indirect evidence comes 
reflected to us from our more intimate acquaint- 

a2 



IV PREFACE. 

ance with the Jewish Church. In the Old Testa- 
ment, we have a full account of its institution, its 
wayward course, and continual declining from 
the truth ; and in the New, we see the judgment 
of God denounced upon this licentious and 
apostate Church in the utter subversion of its 
polity and the dispersion of its members. But 
we not only have a more particular history of the 
Jewish Church ; we have the farther advantage 
of inspired commentators to explain the Mosaic 
dispensation ; the Apostles continually speak of 
God's covenant with Abraham in the language 
and with the enlarged views of Christianity. 
Their object, indeed, was to unfold to their Jewish 
brethren the nature and object of the Gospel 
scheme by means of analogies taken from their 
own economy ; but in so doing, they have enabled 
us to see more clearly the nature and object of 
Judaism ; and we are hereby authorised in apply- 
ing analogies taken from the Christian and Jewish 
dispensations to the illustration of the antediluvian 
period. The apostles, following the example of 
our Saviour, have done so in part themselves ; 
but they have only pointed out, in a general way, 



PREFACE. 



the path which we must ourselves explore to come 
to a knowledge of particulars. 

In this investigation, we may also derive great 
assistance from the nature of prophecy (vid. 
Essay III.), which having different fulfilments of 
the same prediction (each fulfilment being more 
clear than the preceding) we are enabled not 
only to look forward with more distinct views to 
the final completion, but also backward with a 
better understanding of the circumstances which 
first gave rise to it. The most important instance 
of this method is to be found in the prophecy of 
Enoch. There can be no doubt that it was 
addressed to the Antediluvians to warn them of 
God's intended judgment at the flood ; but it is 
also applied by St. Jude to that judgment on the 
Jews which is foretold by our Saviour in his pro- 
phecy concerning the subversion of the Jewish 
polity (Matt, xxiv.) If, then, from the nature of 
prophecy, the prediction of Enoch may be applied 
to the subversion of the Jewish polity; conversely, 
the prophecy of our Lord may be applied to the 
destruction of mankind at the flood : " As the 
days of Noah were (at the coming of the Lord 



VI . PREFACE. 



foretold by Enoch), so shall also the coming of 
the Son of Man be (at the end of the Jewish 
age.)" Vid. Essays VI. and VII. Various 
analogies and applications of prophecy will be 
found throughout this work, but it is the retro- 
spective application of our Lord's prophecy which 
has thrown most light upon the early history ; 
and it was Jude's application of Enoch's prophecy 
to the last days of the Jewish age, that suggested 
this mode of treating the subject. 

As Enoch's prophecy is the only prediction of 
that kind remaining to us from those early ages, 
we must consider it merely as the representative 
of the antediluvian prophecies ; for, doubtless, 
there were many others of a kindred nature. 
Thus John the Baptist's prophecy (Matt. iii. 12.) 
may be looked on as the representative of the 
numerous and varied prophecies that ushered in 
the end of the Jewish dispensation : "He that 
cometh after me is mightier than I ; his fan is in 
his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, 
and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he 
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." 
If this prediction of the Baptist's were the only 



PREFACE. Vll 



one preserved from the Christian Scriptures to 
the subjects of a more glorious dispensation, they 
would form a very erroneous judgment if they 
supposed this prediction to have been the only 
warning to the contemporaries of John. For my 
own part, I suppose that Jude has quoted only the 
concluding sentence of some one of Enoch's pro- 
phecies, as the above text is the conclusion of 
one of the many exhortations of John which he 
delivered during his " preaching in the wilder- 
ness of Judea." I therefore infer that the later 
generations of the antediluvians had advantages 
of a similar kind to those which the Jews possessed 
afterwards ; and, I suppose, as the result was the 
same in both cases, that the winding up of the 
early religious history would disclose events very 
similar to those which occurred before the de- 
struction of Jerusalem. 

Of the importance of my subject I, need to 
speak but very briefly. The scheme of man's 
redemption has come down to us unfolded in 
three distinct, but closely connected dispensations. 
The foundation of the Church was laid at the 
commencement of the first period ; so that, be- 



Vlll PREFACE. 

sides the natural curiosity which would lead us 
to the beginning of things, an adequate know- 
ledge of the opening dispensation would seem 
necessary to a thorough understanding of those 
which follow. The Book of Genesis relates the 
triumph of the serpent over the woman : the 
Book of Revelations sets forth the defeat of the 
serpent by the seed of the woman. In the begin- 
ning of the Bible, we read of man's forfeiture of 
the tree of life in the Garden of Eden ; at the 
close, we see his right thereto restored : "To him 
that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of 
life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of 
God," Rev. ii. 7. " I use the Scripture," says the 
Christian philosopher Boyle, " not as an arsenal 
to be resorted to only for arms and weapons to 
defend this party, or defeat its enemies ; but as a 
matchless temple where I delight to be, to con- 
template the beauty, the symmetry, and the mag- 
nificence of the structure, and to increase my awe, 
and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached 
and adored." Like this pious author, every Chris- 
tian must contemplate, with an awful delight, the 
beauty and magnificence of this structure ; but 

1 



PREFACE. • IX 

he cannot perceive aright the symmetry of all its 
parts, until he have a clear understanding of the 
relative bearing and use of those more obscure 
portions that were raised in the remotest ages. A 
correct knowledge of the Antediluvian period is 
necessary to a full understanding of the whole 
scheme of Providence. 

Several of these Essays, such as the first and 
last, which form in themselves a complete subject, 
have already appeared in the British Magazine ; 
they are now arranged, with some alterations, and 
combined into one whole. 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAY I. 

PAGE 

General Remarks on the Book of Genesis 1 

ESSAY II. 
The Patriarchal Sabbath 9 

ESSAY III. 
The Nature and Object of Prophecy 21 

ESSAY IV. 
The Garden of Eden 35 

ESSAY V. 
On Sacrifice 45 

ESSAY VI. 

The Translation and Prophecy of Enoch 57 

ESSAY VII. 

On the Expectation of the Lord's Coming 70 



Xll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

ESSAY VIII. 

Antichrist Past and To Come 81 

ESSAY IX. 
Enoch, Elias, and John the Baptist 91 

ESSAY X. 

The Fallen Angels and the Spirits in Prison 103 

ESSAY XL 

The Primeval Church 115 

ESSAY XII. 
The Rainbow a Prophetic Sign 128 



Notes 14 



ESSAYS 



THE ANTEDILUVIAN AGE. 



ESSAY L 



GENERAL REMARKS ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 

A history of past events can never be received 
as credentials of a commission from God. We 
might altogether question the truth of the account; 
and, even if we did not, there could be no cer- 
tainty as to the extent of human means within the 
author's reach. If Levi, the publican, (Luke v. 27.) 
on leaving the receipt of custom, had offered to 
the world a history of the period from Malachi to 
his own times in evidence of his being sent by 
God, he would certainly have wrought no con- 
viction ; but when once he had established, on 
proper grounds, his claim to be an apostle, his 
history would have been immediately received as 
a true account. Neither would its authenticity 
be at all affected by the question, whether it was 



2 GENERAL REMARKS ON 

written under a direct revelation, or in the ordi- 
nary way of recording past events. In any wise 
it would be esteemed a true and authentic history, 
as coming from St. Matthew, the apostle of the 
Lord. In the case of St. Matthew, this is a mere 
supposition ; but it is a true representation with 
respect to Moses ; and these remarks have been 
made entirely with a view to illustrate that part of 
his writings which gives a summary of the events 
previous to his own time. 

The Book of Genesis could never afford to the 
Israelites a proof that the God of their fathers 
had indeed appeared unto the writer of it ; but 
when Moses by miracles established his claim to 
a divine commission, they readily received it 
as a true history. Hence it appears that the 
credentials of Moses, as an ambassador from God, 
are quite independent of the Book of Genesis ; on 
the contrary, the Book of Genesis depends entirely 
for its authenticity on the previously established 
character of Moses ; and whether it were written 
under a direct revelation, or in the use of ordinary 
means, we are equally sure that it is a true his- 
tory, as proceeding from Moses, under the direc- 
tion of God. Without, therefore, in the least 
degree affecting either the character of Moses, or 
that of Genesis, by the result arrived at, we are 
at full liberty to consider the extent of the mere 
human resources which Moses might command 



THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 3 

for such a work. It is generally (a) supposed 
that he had the means of writing it without a 
direct revelation ; although, as acting under a 
divine commission, he must have been under the 
constant guidance of inspiration, as to the choice 
of materials and security from error. 

If ordinary sources of information were open to 
Moses, these results would immediately follow : — 

(1.) We should have good grounds for believing 
that there has ever been extant, in some nation or 
family, a series of traditions by which a know- 
ledge of the promise was uninterruptedly pre- 
served, and consolation afforded to the righteous 
in every age. 

(2.) We could explain the origin of other ac- 
counts not given by him, but preserved by tradi- 
tion down to the apostles' times ; such as the 
fallen angels, the prophecy of Enoch, &c. Most 
of these had degenerated into such idle tales, and 
gave rise to such unmeaning disputations among 
the Rabbis, that St. Paul strictly forbade the be- 
lieving Jewish teachers to give any heed to their 
iC endless fabulous traditions," (1 Tim. i. 4.) 

(3.) We could satisfactorily account for the 
similarity observable in the earliest traditions of 
all nations, however distant and unconnected, not 
only the Phenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, and 

(«) For these notes see the end. 
B 2 



4 GENERAL REMARKS ON 

Romans, but the Goths, Hindoos, Chinese, and 
Americans ; creation, paradise, the fall, and the 
deluge, are clearly discernible. Vid. Faber's 
Horse Mosaicse. 

I shall now endeavour to show the probability 
that such information was open to him, and to 
point out the sources from which it might be 
derived. 

It is only natural to suppose that the Israelites, 
in the time of Moses, were not unacquainted with 
their origin, and had not to learn from him their 
national genealogy ; but we have better authority 
to rest on than mere supposition, that some ac- 
counts of their early history were already current 
amongst them. When the Lord appeared unto 
Moses in Horeb, he said unto him, " Thus shalt 
thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord 
God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me 
unto you," (Exod. iii. 15.) A mode of address 
which clearly implies in the persons spoken to, a 
familiar acquaintance with the history of those 
patriarchs. And when, without farther explana- 
tion, God intimated unto Moses his design through 
him, " to bring them up out of that land, unto a 
good land, and a large, unto a land flowing with 
milk and honey," (iii. 8. xxxii. 13.) he doubt- 
less understood at once that it was in fulfilment of 
the covenant which God had made with Abraham, 



THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 

with Isaac, and with Jacob. We have, therefore, 
no reason to think that Moses was the first to 
compose " the generations of Terah, the father 
of Abram," (Gen. xi. 27.) " the generations of 
Isaac," (xxv, 19.) " the generations of Jacob," 
(xxxvii. 2.) ; on the contrary, there is every rea- 
son to suppose that he took the substance of them 
from some authentic source. It was by natural 
means that he wrote " the generations of Aaron 
and Moses," (Numb. iii. 1.) and no one, I believe, 
ever conceived that St. Matthew learnt by inspira- 
tion " the book of the generations of Jesus Christ," 
with which he opens his Gospel, (i. 1 — 17.) when 
he had within his reach such ample means of 
information in the ordinary way. Now all the 
passages of this kind are headed by one and the 
same title, and I cannot but suspect that they are 
of the same nature throughout the Bible ; when- 
ever, therefore, in the earlier parts of Genesis, I 
meet with a passage introduced b}^ what in our 
translation is rendered, " these are the gene- 
rations," I should consider it as taken by Moses 
from some authentic account, either oral or writ- 
ten, (b) 

It could not be matter of surprise to us if we 
should discover, in any of these primitive tradi- 
tions, an artificial structure of sentences, as we 
know that the earliest records of other nations 
were reduced to some kind of measure to fix them 



O GENERAL REMARKS ON 

more deeply in the memory. The passage, " these 
are the generations of Noah," (Gen. vi. 9.) when 
correctly translated and broken into its proper 
lines, is as follows : — 

*' This is the record of Noah : 
Noah was a just man, 
Perfect was he in his ways ; 
With God walked Noah." 

This was, indeed, to let his light shine before 
men ! What brighter character was it possible 
to leave than that, in the midst of that violent 
and corrupt generation which the flood cut off, 
he had been strictly observant of all his duties 
towards God, his neighbour, and himself. In 
strange discordance with this memorial of holi- 
ness, is the reckless declaration of impunity by 
the sensual and presumptuous Lamech. His 
speech (iv. 23.) so naturally falls into the mea- 
sured lines of Hebrew parallelism, that our 
authorized version readily admits of the poetical 
arrangement, (c) " And Lamech said unto his 
wives, Adah and Zillah : — 

" Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech* 
Hearken unto my speech : 
For I have slain a man to my wounding* 

And a young man to my hurt. 
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 
Truly, Lamech, seventy and sevenfold." 



THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 



It is more than probable that this speech was 
taken by Moses from some of the ancient " gene- 
rations," or other primitive traditions ; there is 
certainly no necessity for supposing him to have 
learnt it by inspiration, rather than by the ordi- 
nary way in which knowledge is acquired. To 
us it indirectly affords a proof, that accurate in- 
formation concerning the primeval times not only 
might be, but actually was, preserved among the 
ante-diluvians ; for we incidentally learn from it, 
that the murder of Abel was well known in the 
days of Lamech, who lived in the fifth generation 
from Cain. Now, in all, there were but ten 
generations before the flood ; if, then, Lamech, 
in the seventh generation, was well acquainted 
with Cain's guilt, we can hardly suppose that the 
history of Adam was unknown to Noah in the 
tenth. 

Amidst a great variety of feature, there is yet 
such a family resemblance in the earliest tradi- 
tions of all nations, however distant and uncon- 
nected, as to leave no doubt of their having 
sprung from this common parentage. The chil- 
dren of Ham soon fell into idolatry ; and, toge- 
ther with the religion, they corrupted the true 
accounts which they had received from Noah. 
The descendants of Shem, taking a deeper interest 
in the doctrine of the atonement as shadowed out 
to them in the ordinance of sacrifice, were more 



8 GENERAL REMARKS, &C. 

careful in preserving all the traditions relating to 
the promised seed. But even among them, the 
light became obscured as the distance increased, 
and man's life was shortened ; and although the 
lamp, at various times, was trimmed at the hand 
of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, yet was it in 
danger of expiring in the darkness of Egyptian 
bondage. But God, in his goodness, provided 
otherwise ; he chose Moses his servant, and 
guided him to select and commit to an imperish- 
able record so much of the early history of the 
world as related to the scheme of redemption 
generally, or more immediately to the origin of 
his chosen people, " of whom, as concerning the 
flesh, Christ came." 

The conclusion of the whole is this — that the 
protracted length of life in the first ages was 
sufficient to preserve, by tradition, the original 
revelation to Adam, and the most important of 
the events to which time gave birth ; that certain 
accounts, memorials of the most remote antiquity, 
were sources of information open to Moses ; that 
he incorporated into his narrative only such of 
these as were suitable and necessary to a parti- 
cular design ; and that, in the use of them, he 
followed the practice of all writers, sometimes 
directly quoting, but more generally expressing, 
the substance of them in his own words. 






ESSAY II. 

THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

The Book of Genesis contains the history of the 
six days of creation, and the sanctifying of the 
seventh day to rest. These particulars concerning 
the creation were revealed, not merely to gratify 
a laudable curiosity, but to produce a specific 
moral effect on the heart. God foresaw, and we 
may learn from the records of our race, that crude 
conceptions concerning the creative power give 
rise to absurdity of worship and shamelessness of 
living. In the words of Scripture, which attri- 
bute natural effects to the immediate agency of 
God, — " Men worshipped and served the creature 
more than the Creator ; for this cause, God gave 
them up to vile affections," (Rom. i. 25.) It 
was therefore worthy of the moral Governor of the 
world to reveal himself distinctly as the Almighty 
Creator, and to institute a memorial of the order 
and process of creation. Reason, then, yields a 
ready assent to the announcement of revelation, 
that God, in the beginning, did appoint a solemn 
ordinance for a continual remembrance of his 



10 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

power and goodness : " God blessed the seventh 
day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had 
rested from all his work which God created and 
made." Days, months, and years, are visibly 
marked out by the Creator as natural divisions of 
time for our physical wants ; a week is no such 
natural division, but a positive ordinance of the 
Lord for the moral well-being of man. Let us 
now see what traces we can discover of this weekly 
division under the patriarchal dispensation. 

Concerning Noah we read, " Come thou and 
all thy house into the ark ... for yet seven days 
and I will cause it to rain, &c. ; and it came to 
pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood 
were upon the earth." Again : " Noah sent forth 
a dove . . . And he staid yet other seven days, and 
again he sent forth the dove out of the ark . . . And 
he staid yet other seven days, and sent forth the 
dove which returned not again unto him any 
more." With this transaction I would compare 
another in the New Testament, accompanied with 
the remarks of Paley — " ' The same day at even- 
ing, being the first day of the week, when the 
doors were shut where the disciples were assem- 
bled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in 
the midst of them,' (John xx. 19.) This, for any 
thing that appears in the account, might, as to the 
day, have been accidental ; but, in the 26th verse 
of the same chapter, we read, that ' after eight 



THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 11 

days, (that is, on the first day of the week follow- 
ing) again, the disciples were within,' which 
second meeting upon the same day of the week 
looks like an appointment and design to meet on 
that particular day." — (Mor. Phil. Book V. ch. 7.) 
This inference of Paley's, no one, I think, will 
feel inclined to controvert ; but his reasoning 
appears to be equally, if not more, applicable to 
the case of Noah. Both incidents prove the 
existence of weeks, and render probable a re- 
ligious observance of the respective days. In- 
deed, it has been thought that all the principal 
divine communications were made to the patri- 
archs during their religious services on the seventh 
day ; and Noah, in the case of the dove, seems 
to have expected a particular blessing on that 
day. 

We come now to the time of Abraham. Cir- 
cumcision, as the sign of God's covenant with 
him, was appointed in these words — -" He that is 
eight days old shall be circumcised among you;" 
that is, when a man-child is born, he shall be 
circumcised that day week. This inference is 
sufficiently probable in itself, but it rises into 
certainty when it is viewed in connexion with the 
Levitical rites, which were added to the original 
command : — " If a woman have born a man-child, 
then she shall be unclean seven days, and in the 
eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be cir- 

7 



12 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

cumcised ; but if she bear a maid-child, then she 
shall be unclean two weeks," (Lev. xii. 2. ; see 
also xxii. 27.) Afterwards, when the aged patri- 
arch sent the eldest servant of his house to take a 
wife of his own kindred for his son Isaac, and 
God prospered the commission, " the servant 
rose up in the morning, and he said, Send me 
away unto my master ; and Rebekah's mother 
and brother said, Let the damsel abide with us a 
week or ten days, after that she shall go," (Gen. 
xxiv. 55.) When Jacob had fraudulently ob- 
tained his brother's blessing, his mother's advice 
was — ■" Arise, flee thou to Laban, my brother, to 
Haran, and tarry with him a week, until thy 
brother's fury turn away," (xxvii. 43.) " And 
Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they 
seemed unto him as a single se'nnight, for the 
love he had to her;" or the week of years ap- 
peared unto him as a week of days, (xxix. 20.) 
And afterwards, when he was imposed upon by 
the substitution of Leah, Laban said unto him, 
" Fulfil her week," which was the customary 
period of a marriage feast, as appears from the 
instance of Samson, (Judges xiv. 12.) I add 
the case of a death in a family — " Joseph made 
a mourning for his father seven days," (Gen. 
1. 10.) " And they mourned for Saul seven days," 
(1 Sam. xxxi. 13.) In both instances, the weekly 
division of time determined the length of the 



THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 13 

mourning, as may be inferred from the common 
custom mentioned in Ecclus. xxii. 12. " Seven 
days do men mourn for him that is dead ; but for 
a fool and an ungodly man, all the days of his 
life." (a) 

The passover was instituted during the de- 
parture of the Israelites from Egypt — " Ye shall 
keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever ; seven 
days shall ye eat unleavened bread/' (Exod. 
xii. 15.) If a Jew were asked, at the present 
day, how long that feast was observed, he would 
probably answer, that it was meant to continue a 
week ; and yet the passover was appointed before 
the institution of the Jewish Sabbath. Subse- 
quently, when the whole congregation murmured 
in the wilderness for want of bread, " The Lord 
said unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from 
heaven for you, and the people shall go out and 
gather a certain rate every day ; and it shall 
come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall 
prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be 
twice as much as they gather daily," (Exod. 
xvi. 4.) Paley considers " the transaction in 
the wilderness here recited as the first actual 
institution of the Sabbath," and consequently as 
the origin of the weekly division of time ; on the 
contrary, the double provision on the sixth day 
seems to me to have been made in reference to 
the already existing division into weeks, and con- 



14 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

sequently to prove some previous distinction of 
the seventh day. 

This author, and the class of writers who take 
the same view of the subject, dwell much upon 
the circumstance that the Sabbath is called a 
sign between God and the chosen people; and 
they consider it as conclusive evidence against 
the observance of a Sabbath among the patriarchs. 
"The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath: 
it is a sign between me and the children of Israel 
for ever," (Exod. xxxi. 16.) " I gave them my 
Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them," 
(Ezek. xx. 12.) " Now it does not seem easy (says 
Paley) to understand how the Sabbath could be a 
sign between God and the people of Israel, unless 
the observance of it was peculiar to that people, 
and designed to be so." — (Mor. Phil. Book V. ch. 7.) 
A few remarks on the rite of circumcision will 
perhaps render this conception more easy. Cir- 
cumcision was the sign of God's covenant with 
Abraham, that his seed, among other privileges, 
should possess the land in which he was then a 
stranger, (Gen. xvii. 8.) ; and, accordingly, before 
his descendants were allowed to enter upon their 
inheritance, God gave an express command to 
Joshua to circumcise the children of Israel, for 
" all the people that were born in the wilderness, 
by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, 
them they had not circumcised," (Josh. v. 5.) Now 



THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 15 

this rite was observed by several nations, the de- 
scendants of Abraham, as well as by the Jews ; 
and yet it was peculiarly a sign to the Jews alone. 
This consideration removes the preliminary diffi- 
culty of a rite or ordinance being a sign to a par- 
ticular people without being peculiar to them ; 
but, in fact, the Sabbath was a sign to the Jews 
of a miraculous nature, and of a distinctive cha- 
racter, which clearly proved that Jehovah was 
their God, and they his people ; and the writers 
who raise the objection do not seem to have un- 
derstood in what the force of the sign consisted. 
When the Almighty determined, by means of 
the Israelites, to make known among the nations 
his name JEHOVAH (b), he took the chosen 
people from under the common course of nature, 
and instituted a series of Sabbatical ordinances, 
the observance of which required the constant 
operation of an extraordinary providence. The 
double provision of manna on the sixth day was 
truly a Sabbatic sign to the generation in the 
wilderness ; and the same kind of sign, itself 
also appointed at the same time with the Sabbath 
day, was continued to them after their settlement 
in Canaan, in the threefold harvest before every 
sabbatic year. 

It is farther objected that the distinction of the 
Sabbath is, in its nature a positive ceremonial 
institution ; but so also is sacrifice, with its dis- 



16 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

tinction of clean and unclean animals, (Gen. viii. 
20.) which was confessedly practised by the patri- 
archs. All previously existing ordinances under- 
went a change in their adoption into the Jewish 
ritual. Thus when Moses enacted laws concern- 
ing the property of heiresses, (Numb, xxxvi.) and 
the giving of a bill of divorce, (Deut. xxiv.) he 
was not instituting marriage for the first time ; he 
only modified the original existing law (Gen. 
ii. 24.) to suit the condition and state of his na- 
tion. And when he commanded them from God 
to keep the Sabbath holy, and to light no fires 
therein, he was not instituting the Sabbath ; but 
enjoined that special observance of an universal 
ordinance (Gen. ii. 3.) which was permitted by 
the nature of the country they were about to 
occupy. Yet, in neither case, was it so from the 
beginning ; and Christ, the more perfect Law- 
giver, brought back both institutions to the more 
pure and simple form of the patriarchal dispen- 
sation. The patriarchs sanctified the seventh 
day by a religious observance of it, but did not 
abstain from all manner of work, even the slightest 
and most necessary, under the penalty of death : 
they did not sabbatize, as the Christian Fathers 
rightly say of them. This distinction is readily 
inferred from the different treatment of those that 
violated the Sabbatic rest at the period when the 
Sabbatic sign was first given, and of those who 



THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 17 

transgressed after that sign with its severe penalty 
had been fully established. The Israelites, who 
went out to gather manna on the first seventh day 
after that miraculous provision, received only a 
verbal reproof; but death was inflicted on the 
man that gathered sticks (Numb. xv. 33.) on the 
Sabbath, after it had been solemnly promulgated* 
Work was equally done in both cases ; but the 
former transgressed no established law of sabba- 
tizing on the seventh day, whilst the latter vio- 
lated an express provision of the Jewish Sabbath, 
" Whosoever doeth any work on the Sabbath 
day, he shall surely be put to death," (Exod. 
xxxi. 15.) 

It is allowed that nine commandments of the 
Decalogue are of moral and universal obligation ; 
but it is denied by some that the fourth com- 
mandment is so, on the ground that it belongs 
solely to the ceremonial law, which had its pecu- 
liar sanctions and promises. But this reasoning 
appears to apply with greater force to the fifth 
commandment, which openly professes a tem- 
poral and local sanction, than to the fourth which 
assigns a reason that concerns all mankind. I 
consider the ten commandments to be of universal 
obligation, as well because they are so in their 
nature, as because I observe a marked distinction 
in the manner in which the precepts are enforced 

c 



18 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

in the Two Tables and the exclusively Jewish 
ritual. In the Decalogue we read — " Honour 
thy father and thy mother," — " Remember the 
Sabbath day to keep it holy." These general 
duties are made strictly Levitical by these pecu- 
liar enactments — " He that curseth his father or 
his mother shall surely be put to death" (Exod. 
xxi. 17.) " Whosoever doeth any work on the 
Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death" 
(Exod. xxxi. 15.) The obligation to honour 
parents and to observe a Sabbath does not rest 
on the authority of the Mosaic Law ; only, under 
it, the obligation was more strongly enforced by the 
penalty of death. When that Law was abrogated, 
the Jews were relieved from the penalty, but not 
mankind from the duties themselves. These re- 
mained in the Christian code ; the former was 
taken direct from the second Table with the tem- 
poral promise annexed (Ephes. vi. 2.), and the 
observance of a seventh day is binding on us from 
the practice of the Apostles and the sanction of 
Christ. It is not merely a ceremonial, but a na- 
tural duty, to honour our heavenly Father and 
our earthly parents ; and the two are thus joined 
in Lev. xix. 3. — "Ye shall fear every man his 
mother and his father, and keep my sabbaths : I 
am the Lord your God." That the obligation to 
sanctify the seventh day and to honour parents 



THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 19 

was not unknown to Noah, we may infer from the 
history of the dove in the ark, and from the 
punishment of the undutiful Ham. 

To escape the difficulties, that were supposed 
to encumber the belief of a Patriarchal Sabbath, 
some writers have put aside the plain and obvious 
meaning of Gen. ii. 3, and given the forced con- 
struction that Moses used a prolepsis, and that 
the order of connexion and not of time intro- 
duced the mention of the Sabbath in the history 
of the subject which it was ordained to comme- 
morate. But this is only a supposition, and one 
which entails the unreasonable notion that God 
rested on the first seventh day, but blessed and 
sanctified it, not at that time, but for that reason, 
about 2,500 years after. To this merely human 
gloss I oppose the authority of the Son of God : 
" the Sabbath was made for man," not for the 
chosen people solely, but for all mankind. The 
world was made for man in six days, and the 
Sabbath on the seventh, namely, on that seventh 
day, when he could first use it. The contrary 
opinion may have derived some support from an 
inattention to the improper division of the chapter. 
The first chapter of Genesis, I conceive, should 
have been extended beyond the six days of crea- 
tion, so as to contain the sanctifying of the se- 
venth day to rest, and perhaps to end with the 
full close : 

c 2 



20 THE PATRIARCHAL SABBATH. 

" This is the account of the heavens and the earth at their 

creation, 
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." 

The expression, " at their creation," will 
hardly allow us to suppose that any part of the 
history is proleptical ; the whole account of the 
seven days is one continued narrative of succes- 
sive events. Thus the Lord of the Sabbath and 
the lawgiver of the Jewish Sabbath unite in giving 
testimony to its divine institution at the creation. 
The whole passage, " This is the account of," &c. 
Gen, ii. 4 — 6. is considered at length in Essay 
XII. 



ESSAY III. 

THE NATURE AND OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 

The first voice of prophecy connects the begin- 
ning of the world with the end, and unfolds the 
whole scheme of Providence with respect to man. 
Sin and death were introduced through Satan, 
and are to be abolished by Christ, The first inti- 
mation of man's recovery was obscurely given to 
Adam : addressing the serpent, God says, " I 
will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel," 
(Gen. iii. 15.) The same merciful design was 
plainly revealed under the Christian dispensation : 
"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive. But every man in his own 
order ; Christ the first fruits, afterward they that 
are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the 
end, when he shall have delivered up the king- 
dom to God, even the Father ; when he shall 
have put down all rule, and all authority, and 
power. For he must reign, till he hath put 
all enemies under his feet. The last enemy 



22 THE NATURE AND 

that shall be destroyed is death," (1 Cor. xv. 
22.) 

The final deliverance of believers from the 
power of Satan by means of a Redeemer, and the 
coming of that Redeemer in the last days to ex- 
ecute judgment on Satan and the ungodly, con- 
stitute the sole great object of Prophecy, " for 
the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," 
Rev. xix. 10. In other words, it is the nature 
and object of prophecy to testify of a Redeemer; 
and so much is she occupied with this her grand 
object, that when a temporal deliverance is to be 
promised to the Church, or a temporal judgment 
to be denounced on the adversary, she seems less 
engaged in performing her immediate commis- 
sion than in proclaiming the triumphal advent of 
her Lord to put all enemies under his feet, And 
when, in consequence of this ardent anticipation, 
scoffers hastily objected, " Where is the promise 
of his coming," St. Peter instructs believers as to 
the cause of this apparent delay : " Beloved, be 
not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is 
with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thou- 
sand years as one day. The Lord is not slack 
concerning his promise, as some men count slack- 
ness ; but is long suffering to usward, not willing 
that any should perish, but that all should come 
to repentance," 2nd Epist. iii. 8. The Almighty 
indeed, has sufficient cause to hasten on the final 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 23 

catastrophe ; but he awaits the fulness of his mer- 
ciful scheme, and sends occasional judgments as 
tokens and warnings of the final punishment of 
obdurate sinners. 

That such is the systematic language of Pro- 
phecy may be fully proved by examples taken 
from her own sacred oracles ; and it seems to be 
expressly pointed out by one of her own inspired 
servants : " Not any prophecy of Scripture is of 
individual fulfilment," 2 Pet. i. 20. Such prophe- 
cies refer equally to the several occasions of God's 
delivering his Church or punishing its enemies ; 
and all point onward to the great victory of 
Christ over the powers of darkness. " Prophecy 
came not in old time by the will of man" to 
gratify individual curiosity on any urgent occa- 
sion ; " but holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost," in order to support 
the faith of believers generally, and to afford a 
convincing proof of a superintending Providence. 
The value of every heathen oracle passed away 
with the immediate occasion of it ; but not any 
prophecy of the Scripture does so become a dead 
letter : it continues in force and remains an effi- 
cient calendar of God's times and seasons. 

Hence the Christian may still read concerning 
the deliverance of Christ's Church from her mys- 
tic enemies, Assyria and Edom, in the same page 
which formerly comforted the Jew with the assur- 



24 THE NATURE AND 

ance of a temporal deliverance from those perse- 
cuting kingdoms. Indeed, these adversaries of 
the Jews are spoken of in such august terms, as 
show in themselves that the language has but a 
very subordinate reference to a Sennacherib, &c. 
We at once behold a greater power than an As- 
syrian king in the following apostrophe : " Thou 
shalt pronounce this parable upon the king of Ba- 
bylon, and say : 

" How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the 

morning ! 
Art cut down to the earth, thou that didst subdue the 

nations ! 
Yet thou didst say in thine heart, I will ascend the heavens ; 
Above the stars of God I will exalt my throne. 
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds ; I will be like 

the Most High ; 
But thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the sides of 

the pit." — Isaiah xiv. Bp. Lowth's Version. 

The enemies of the children of Israel are also 
represented as objects of such universal concern, 
as prove that they cannot relate to the seed of 
Abraham confined to a particular nation ; but 
that a time is referred to, when the Church of 
God shall embrace all the nations of the earth. 

il Draw near, O ye nations, and hearken, 
And attend unto me, O ye peoples ! 
Let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof ; 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 25 

The world, and all that spring from it. 

For the wrath of Jehovah is kindled against all the nations, 

And his anger against all the orders thereof : 

He hath devoted them ; he hath given them up to slaughter." 

And yet the small kingdom of Edom is the par- 
ticular object of vengeance pointed out by the 
prophet : 

" For my sword is made bare in the heavens ; 
Behold on Edom it shall descend ; 
And on the people justly by me devoted to destruction." 

Although it is very clear that the whole world 
is deeply concerned in this day of the Lord's 
vengeance on behalf of his Church : (a) 

" For it is the day of vengeance to Jehovah; 

The year of recompense to the advocate of Sion." 

Isaiah xxxiv. 

" Remember, O Jehovah, against the children 
of Edom the day of Jerusalem, when they said, 
Down with it, down with it, even to the founda- 
tion thereof. daughter of Babylon, that art 
to be destroyed, happy shall he be that rewardeth 
thee, as thou hast served us," (Psalm cxxxvii. 
7,8.) 

When Sennacherib railed and blasphemed 
against the Most High in his attack upon Jeru- 
salem (2 Kings xix.), the sentence passed upon him 



26 THE NATURE AND 

was, " Behold, I will send a blast upon him, &c. 
And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord 
went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians 
an hundred, fourscore, and five thousand." Isaiah, 
prophetically describing this supernatural de- 
struction of the Assyrian, says of Christ (xi. 4.) 

" He shall smite the earth with the blast of his mouth, 

And with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked one." 

And again, (xiv. 24.) : 

" Surely as I have devised, so shall it be : 
And as I have purposed, it shall stand ; 
To crush the Assyrian in my land, 
And to trample him on my mountains." 

Isaiah makes farther mention of this Assyrian 
(xxx. 31.) : 

" By the voice of Jehovah the Assyrian shall be beaten down : 
And with fierce battles shall he fight against them. 
For Tophet is ordained of old ; 
Even the same for the king is prepared ; 
He hath made it deep ; he hath made it large ; 
A fiery pyre, and abundance of fuel ; 

And the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of sulphur shall 
kindle it." 

Of the first passage (xi. 4.) St. Paul has made an 
application to the Man of Sin, (2 Thess. ii. 8.) 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 27 

and thus identified this Assyrian (b) with the 
Babylon of Rev. xviii. The fate of Sennacherib's 
army leads us to suppose that the Man of Sin also 
will meet with a supernatural destruction in the 
Holy Land, near to Jerusalem. But this pro- 
phecy against the Assyrian has a still farther re- 
ference to Gog and Magog : " Behold, I am 
against thee, O Gog ; thou shalt fall upon the 
mountains of Israel ; and I will send a fire on 
Magog." Ezek. xxxix. compared with Rev. xx. 7. 
where the same judgment is denounced on Gog 
and Magog, and their leader Satan : " They 
compassed the camp of the saints about, and the 
beloved city ; and fire came down from God out 
of heaven and devoured them." 

Isaiah (xiii. 19.) thus foretold the destruction of 
Babylon : — 

" Babylon shall become, she that was the beauty of kingdoms, 
The glory of the pride of the Chaldeans, 
As the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by the hand of 
God." 

This overthrow of the literal Babylon began about 
two hundred years after, and became as complete 
as that of Sodom, yet not by the same means (c). 
But the prophecy looks forward to the destruction 
of another Babylon, which is thus described in 
the Christian Scriptures : " Babylon the great is 
fallen, is fallen ; She shall be utterly burnt with 

7 



28 THE NATURE AND 

fire : The kings of the earth shall lament, when 
they shall see the smoke of her burning." (Rev. 
xxviii.) 

The restoration of the Jews from the Baby- 
lonian captivity was effected through the instru- 
mentality of Cyrus, who took Babylon by drying 
up the channel of the Euphrates, as had been 
foretold by the Spirit of God : — 

" He saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited ; 
And to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built ; 
And her desolated places I will restore. 
Who saith to the deep, Be thou wasted, 
And I will make dry thy rivers. 
Who saith to Cyrus, Thou art my shepherd! 
And he shall fulfil all my pleasure. 
Who saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built : 
And to the Temple, Thy foundations shall be laid." 

Isaiah xliv. 26. 

The second restoration of the Jews is connected 
in prophecy with a similar drying up of the 
Euphrates : — 

" And it shall come to pass in that day, 

Jehovah shall again the second time put forth his hand 

To recover the remnant of his people, 

That remaineth from Assyria, &c. 

And he shall lift up a signal to the nations ; 

And he shall gather the outcasts of Israel, 

And the dispersed of Judah shall he collect, 

From the four extremities of the earth. 

And the jealousy of Ephraim shall cease, 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 29 

And the enmity of Judah shall be no more ; 

Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, 

And Judah shall not be at enmity with Ephraim. 

And Jehovah shall smite with a drought the tongue of the 
Egyptian sea ; (d) 

And he shall shake his hand over the river with his vehe- 
ment wind ; 

And he shall strike it into seven streams, 

And make them pass over it dry shod. 

And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, 

Which shall remain from Assyria ; as it was unto Israel, 

In the day when he came up from the land of Egypt." 

Isaiah xi. 11. 

See also Rev. xvi. 12. " And the sixth angel 
poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; 
and the water thereof was dried up, that the way 
of the kings of the East might be prepared." 

But farther : The return of the Jews from 
the Babylonian captivity is represented as tak- 
ing place under the immediate guidance of 
Jehovah : — 

" A voice crieth: 

In the wilderness prepare ye the way of Jehovah ! 
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God !" 

Isaiah xl. 3. 

" It may be useful," says Bishop Lowth, "to 
consider carefully the images under which the pro- 
phet displays his subject. He hears a crier giving 
orders, by solemn proclamation, to prepare the 
way of the Lord in the wilderness ; to remove all 



30 THE NATURE AND 

obstructions before Jehovah marching through the 
desert. The deliverance of God's people from 
the Babylonian captivity is considered by him as 
parallel to the former deliverance of them from 
the Egyptian bondage. God was then repre- 
sented as their king leading them in person 
through the vast deserts, which lay in their way 
to the promised land of Canaan. It is not merely 
for Jehovah himself, that in both cases the way 
was to be prepared, and all obstructions to be 
removed ; but for Jehovah marching in person at 
the head of his people. 

" Yet obvious and plain as I think this literal 
sense is, nevertheless we have the irrefragable 
authority of John the Baptist, and of our blessed 
Saviour himself, for applying this exordium of 
the prophecy to the opening of the Gospel by the 
preaching of John, and to the introduction of 
Messiah's kingdom ; who was to effect a much 
greater deliverance of the people of God, Gentiles 
as well as Jews, from the captivity of sin, and the 
dominion of death. 

" The Jewish Church, to which John was sent 
to announce the coming of Messiah, was at that 
time in a barren and desert condition, unfit without 
reformation for the reception of her king ... It was 
in this desert country, destitute at that time of all 
religious cultivation, in true piety and good works 
unfruitful, that John was sent to prepare the way 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 31 

of the Lord by preaching repentance." Bishop 
Lowth's Notes on Isaiah, ch. xl. 

If the Jews required an extraordinary provi- 
dence to bring them back from the Babylonian cap- 
tivity, much more do they stand in need of super- 
natural aid to collect them from their present 
wide and lasting dispersion. And if the Jewish 
Church was in a barren and desert condition, 
when John was sent to announce the approach of 
" the kingdom of heaven ;" is that wilderness now 
fitted, without a similar preparation, to receive the 
thorough establishment of Messiah's kingdom ! 
There remaineth then another fulfilment of this 
prophecy, which will take place at the same time 
with the literal accomplishment of these words of 
Malachi :— 

" Behold, I will send unto you Elijah the prophet, 
Before the great and terrible day of the Lord come, 
That he may convert the heart of the fathers together with the 
children," &c. — ch. iv. 5. 

" I will surely gather, O Jacob, all of thee ; 
I will surely assemble the residue of Israel. 
He that forceth a passage is come up before them ; 
They have forced a passage and have passed through the 

gate: 
They are gone forth by it, and their king passeth before 
them ; 
Even Jehovah at the head of them." — Micah ii. 12. 

The Jews look upon this king as their Messiah, 



32 THE NATURE AND 

and the personage that forceth a passage before 
them, as his forerunner Elijah. (Vid. Essay 
IX.) 

At the appointed time the Lord will come to 
bruise the serpent's head, and put all enemies 
under his feet. This event will be literally ful- 
filled by a personal coming of the Lord in judg- 
ment ; but also, and in reference to this event, 
any judgment on the enemies of the Church, or 
on any apostate branch of that Church, is called 
" the coming of the Lord." Thus in the case of 
the Church at Sardis, our Saviour says : " Re- 
member how thou hast received and heard, and 
hold fast, and repent ; if therefore thou shalt not 
watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou 
shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee," 
(Rev. iii. 3.) There are, however, besides the 
end of the world, three particular periods in 
which more especially the Lord is said to come. 
He came in judgment on the apostate Ante- 
diluvian Church, and on the unbelieving Jewish 
Church ; he will come, in like manner, on an 
idolatrous Christian Church at the end of the times 
of the Gentiles. For this reason, the prophecy 
of Enoch, which was fulfilled at the flood, is 
applied by St. Jude to his own times ; and is 
still equally applicable to the end of the present 
age, and to the consummation of all things. 

The prophecy of our Lord, (Matt, xxiv.) con- 



OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 33 

cerning the introduction of Christianity at the 
subversion of the Jewish polity, is even more 
applicable to the complete establishment of Mes- 
siah's kingdom at the end of the times of the 
Gentiles. Its primary fulfilment in the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem presented a fiery ordeal to the 
men of that generation, but its fuller completion 
in the utter destruction of the fourth, or Roman 
empire, will prove a furnace seven times more 
heated, to try the faith of another generation. 
Almost every particular that is mentioned by our 
Lord among the signs of his former coming, will 
be repeated in a new cycle during the coming of 
his great and terrible day : nation shall rise 
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom ; 
because iniquity shall abound, the love of many 
shall wax cold ; there shall arise false Christs and 
false prophets ; Jerusalem shall again be com- 
passed with armies of the Roman empire ; in the 
holy place shall be seen a still greater abomina- 
tion of desolation, even the idolatrous ensigns of 
a nominally Christian Church ; the Gospel must 
first be published among all nations ; and as a 
snare shall that day come on all them that dwell 
on the face of the whole earth. Many of these 
particulars will again be repeated in the da}^ that 
Satan shall lead Gog and Magog to compass the 
camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, 
and shall go out to deceive the nations which are 

D 



34 THE NATURE AND OBJECT OF PROPHECY. 

in the four quarters of the earth to gather them 
together to battle, (Rev. xx. 7.) 

These instances sufficiently show the real mean- 
ing of St. Peter's cautionary remark, " knowing 
this first," &c. ; and exemplify the principle, that 
not any prophecy of Scripture does receive an 
individual fulfilment, and then die (as it were) in 
giving birth to a fact : it continues prophesying 
to all generations, for it looks forward to the great 
winding up of the whole scheme of Providence. 
The previous judgments, under the name of the 
Lord's coming, are so many tokens and har- 
bingers of the event itself; and prove, however 
the spirit of Antichrist may vaunt itself, that we 
are under the moral government of God, and that 
" He hath appointed a day, in the which he will 
judge the world in righteousness by that Man 
whom he hath ordained." 

We may now see the impropriety of the phrase, 
" The double sense of prophecy." In the bad 
acceptation of these words, Scripture is laid open 
to the sneer of the scoffer ; and even in the in- 
tended sense, the words are of too limited a mean- 
ing to convey any correct notion of the actual 
extent of the subject. I therefore suggest that a 
more proper, because a more general designation, 
would be some such phrase, as " The progressive 
nature of prophecy." 



ESSAY IV. 

THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

In the New Jerusalem described by St. John, 
(Rev. xxi. and xxii.) in which was the tree of 
life, and there was no more curse, "he saw no 
temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty, and 
the Lamb are the temple of it;" neither do we 
read of any temple in the Garden of Eden, but 
of a free and open converse between Adam and 
his Maker. 

Immediately on the fall, however, a thick veil 
was drawn down between corrupt human nature 
and the spiritual world. Man no longer witnessed 
the brightness of God's glory, but from that time 
saw him only as in a glass darkly, through the me- 
dium of external ordinances; and he who had lately 
filled the Garden of Eden with his glorious ma- 
jesty, did now darkly manifest himself in a mate- 
rial fabric to receive the worship of repentant 
sinners, who faithfully sought the way to the tree 
of life. The woful change is thus recorded in 
the sacred history: — "So God drove out the 
man ; and He placed in a tabernacle, before the 

d 2 



36 THE GARDEN 'OF EDEN. 

Garden of Eden, the Cherubim and the sword- 
like lambent flame, to keep the way to the tree 
of life," (Gen. iii. 24.) The Jews were pro- 
bably acquainted with these Cherubim by tradi- 
tion ; but even if they were not, brief and ob- 
scure as the account may appear to us, to them 
it was sufficiently clear by means of the fiery 
manifestation between the Cherubim in their own 
sacred tabernacle. Tt appears, then, that the front 
of the Garden of Eden was the place in the an- 
tediluvian world which the Lord did choose out of 
all the earth to put his name there. It is a 
higher principle than curiosity that would lead us 
to trace out the history of this highly favoured 
land. 

The first mention of it occurs in these words: 
"But the Lord God had first planted a Garden 
in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had 
formed;" from which we infer that God care- 
fully planted out, as a choice garden, a certain 
portion of the country of Eden. The situation of 
the country itself may be determined by this 
farther description of it : — " A river went out of 
Eden to water the garden, and from thence it 
was parted and became into four heads. The 
name of the first is Pison ; that is it which com- 
passeth the whole land of Havilah. The name 
of the second river is Gihon ; the same is it that 
compasseth the whole land of Cush. The name 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 37 

of the third river is Hiddekel ; that is it which 
goeth toward the east of Asshur. And the fourth 
river is Euphrates." The geographical details 
must now inevitably be involved in great obscurity, 
but I would explain them in general terms thus : — 
The source of the river was in the north of Eden, 
from which it passed in one stream through the 
garden, and then divided into four rivers ; the 
easternmost of these was the Euphrates, whilst 
the Gihon took the most westerly course towards 
the African Cush. The land of Eden, then, 
reached on one side to the river Euphrates, and 
extended on the other to the African Cush, in the 
neighbourhood of the Nile. 

Let me now draw attention to the terms of 
God's covenant with Abraham: — "In the same 
day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, 
saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, 
from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the 
river Euphrates," (Gen. xv. 18.) Solomon, indeed, 
once derived tribute from all this tract of country, 
but Abraham's posterity have never yet occupied 
it; this promise, therefore, remains among those 
which are still to be made good to the chosen 
people of God at their restoration. 

But not only was this country promised to Abra- 
ham four hundred years before his seed entered 
upon any part of their possession ; it was even 
marked out for him from the time that the waters 



38 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

of the flood were dried up from off the earth. 
In the song of Moses, shortly before his death, 
we find these remarkable words, (Deut. xxxii. 7.) 

" Remember thou the days of old, 
Consider the years of many generations ; 
Ask thy father, and he will show thee, 
Thy elders, and they will tell thee {that) 
When the Most High portioned out the nations, 
When he separated the children of Adam, 
He settled the boundaries of the peoples 
By the number of the children of Israel ; 
For the portion of Jehovah is his people : 
Jacob, the measure of his inheritance." 



It would seem, then, that in the time of Moses, 
there was current a tradition, handed down 
through many generations, that the original divi- 
sion of the nations was made, not only by Divine 
appointment, but with a particular reference to 
a sufficient provision, or measured inheritance, for 
a chosen people of the Lord. And this mea- 
sured inheritance was the place in the post-dilu- 
vian world which the Lord God did choose out of 
all the earth to put his name there, (a) 

This interesting country has long been little 
better than a desert, and quite undistinguished 
by any marks of the Divine favour ; yet prophecy 
ever recurs with delight to the happy period when 
once more it shall become the glory of all lands 

7 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 39 

for its fertility, and still more for the open mani- 
festation of the Divine presence. 

" Look unto Abraham your father, 
And unto Sarah who bore you ; 
For I called him being a single person, 
And I blessed him, and I multiplied him. 
Thus then shall Jehovah console Sion, 
He shall console all her desolations ; 
And he shall make her wilderness like Eden, 
And her desert like the Garden of the Lord : 
Joy and gladness shall be found in her, 
Thanksgiving and the voice of melody." — Isaiah li. 2. 

" The sun shall be no more thy light by day, 
Nor by night shall the moon enlighten thee ; 
But Jehovah shall be to thee an everlasting light, 
And thy God shall be thy glory." — Isaiah lx. 19. 

And as this country is reserved for the return of 
the brightness of the Lord's glory, so is it also 
destined to be the stage of God's triumph over 
the temporal and spiritual foes of his Church. 
" Thou shalt pronounce this parable upon the 
king of Babylon, and say : — 

" How hath the oppressor ceased, &c. 

Jehovah God of Hosts hath sworn, saying, 

Surely as I have devised, so shall it be, 

And as I have purposed, it shall stand, 

To crush the Assyrian in my land, 

And to trample him on my mountains." — Isaiah xiv. 



40 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

The Assyrian primarily meant here is Sennache- 
rib, whose army was destroyed near Jerusalem, 
(2 Kings xix.) ; but he only shadows out a far 
more dreadful enemy to the people of God ; to 
himself will apply hardly any of the grand ex- 
pressions of the prophet. Ezekiel (xxxi.) will as- 
sist us in discovering the nature of this enemy : 
" Behold the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon; 
not any tree in the Garden of God was like unto 
him in his beauty ; so that all the trees of Eden 
that were in the Garden of God, envied him." 
This is the picture of a true Church, which after- 
wards corrupted itself. The angel in Rev. xviii. 
describes her greatness and her fall : — " Babylon 
the great is fallen, is fallen : no man buyeth her 
merchandise any more : gold, silver, precious 
stones, purple, vessels of ivory, brass, &c, and 
souls of men." We meet with her again in Ezek. 
xxvii. 13, under the character of Tyrus: "Javan, 
Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants ; 
they traded the souls of men and vessels of brass 
in thy market." The crushing of this Assyrian 
is thus described, in Rev. xix. 20, " The Beast 
was taken, and with him the false prophet that 
wrought miracles before him, with which he de- 
ceived them that had received the mark of the 
Beast, and them that worshipped his image; these 
both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning 
with brimstone. "— Vid. Essay III. 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 41 

But Christ has not yet put all enemies under 
his feet; there still remain eth the spiritual As- 
syrian, the great Apostate, the old Serpent. The 
clearest representation of him, is as king of Tyrus: 
" Son of Man take up a lamentation upon the king 

of Tyrus Thou sealest up the sum, full of 

wisdom, and perfect in beauty ; thou hast been 
in Eden the Garden of God. Thou art the 
anointed covering Cherub, and I have set thee 
so ; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God. 
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that 
thou wast created, till iniquity was found in 
thee .... Therefore, I will cast thee, as profane, out 
of the mountain of God ; and I will destroy thee, 
O covering Cherub, from the midst of the stones 
of fire. Thine heart was lifted up, because of thy 
beauty ; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by rea- 
son of thy brightness : I will cast thee to the 
ground." (Ezek. xxviii.) The zealous angel of 
light became an ambitious fallen spirit, and his 
end is utter destruction. Of this same Assyrian 
speaketh Isaiah (ch. xiv.) in his more appropriate 
character of king of Babylon : " Thou shalt pro- 
nounce this parable on the king of Babylon, and 
say :— 

" How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the 
morning ! 
Art cut down to the earth, thou that didst subd le the 
nations ! 



42 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

Yet thou didst say in thy heart, I will ascend the heavens, 

Above the stars of God I will exalt my throne ; 

And I will sit upon the mount of presence, on the sides of the 

north, 
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like 

the Most High ; 

But thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the sides of 
the pit. 

Jehovah, God of Hosts, hath sworn, saying : 

Surely as I have devised, so shall it be, 

And as I have purposed, it shall stand, 

To crush the Assyrian in my land, 

And to trample him on my mountains." 

The crushing of this Assyrian in God's land is 
thus described in Rev. xx. " When the thousand 
years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of 
his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations 
which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog 
and Magog, to gather them together to battle ; 
the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. 
And they went up on the breadth of the earth, 
and compassed the camp of the saints about, and 
the beloved city ; and fire came down from God 
out of heaven, and devoured them. And the 
Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of 
fire and brimstone, where the Beast and the False 
Prophet are, and shall be tormented day and 
night for ever and ever." Thus in the place 
where the Serpent deceived man to his fall, and 
where he bruised the heel of the promised seed, 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 43 

there also shall that seed of the woman bruise thy 
head, O Satan, and restore thy deluded victim to 
his original intercourse with God. Then shall 
death be utterly destroyed, and the veil removed 
that obscures man's noblest faculties. 

" On this mountain shall Jehovah destroy the covering, 
That covered the face of all the peoples : 
And the veil that was spread over all the nations. 
He shall utterly destroy death for ever ; 
And the Lord Jehovah shall wipe the tear from all faces, 
And remove the reproach of his people from the whole earth ; 
For Jehovah hath spoken it." — Isaiah xxv. 

In the beginning, through the wiles of the Ser- 
pent, man did lose the Garden of Eden, in which 
was the tree of life, and there was no curse ; at 
the end, through the victory of the Lamb, man 
shall be again admitted into the happy place, 
where is the tree of life, and there shall be no 
more curse. (Rev. xxi. and xxii.) Blessed are 
they that do his commandments, that they may 
have right to the tree of life, and enter in. The 
King shall say unto them, Come, ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world (b). 

Human reason cannot account for the existence 
of evil under the moral government of a good 
and holy God ; but it is enough for the humble 
Christian to know what the sure word of prophecy 



44 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

discloses to him ; that the eventful periods of this 
world's history, like the acts of a drama, have 
been all methodically arranged and carefully 
provided for by the Almighty disposer of events ; 
and, though the contest may appear in itself both 
long and perilous, yet certain victory is held up 
in the distance to the view of the believer ; the 
eye of faith sees, as in a glass, the Son of God 
going forth conquering and to conquer. 



ESSAY V. 

ON SACRIFICE. 

The design and economy of a Church, as the 
means of communication between the creature 
and the Creator, arose out of the necessities of 
man and the mercies of his Maker. Its ordi- 
nances, therefore, have ever been founded on an 
express revelation of the Divine will. Imme- 
diately upon the fall, we meet with the funda- 
mental article of faith in a Redeemer, the ordi- 
nance of Sacrifice, expressive of that belief, and 
a stated time for religious observances. Articles 
of faith, stated modes and periods of worship, 
embrace all the essentials of a Church ; and 
these had existence in the world from the time of 
Adam. 

Having already considered the question of the 
Patriarchal Sabbath, I proceed now with that of 
Sacrifice. 

St. Paul informs us, that " by faith Abel offered 
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain;" 
hence we cannot but infer that Abel complied 
with a positive ordinance of the Lord; and, con- 



46 ON SACRIFICE. 

sequently, that sacrifice was a Divine institution. 
When the Apostle states that " by faith Abraham 
went out from his own country, not knowing 
whither he went," he explains the nature of this 
faith by adding, " when he was called by God to 
go out into a place which he should after receive 
for an inheritance, he obeyed." Thus Abel, 
having the promise of the seed of the woman 
whereon to ground his faith, and believing in the 
all-efficient sacrifice that was after to be made, 
complied with the Divine ordinance, and brought 
of the firstlings of his flock an offering unto the 
Lord. " And the Lord had respect unto Abel 
and to his offering." Yet, " without faith it is 
impossible to please him, for he that cometh to 
God must believe that he is, and that he is a 
rewarder of them that diligently seek him;" but 
this diligence in seeking would be worse than lost 
labour, unless it were employed in the use of in- 
stituted means, and according to an express reve- 
lation of the Divine will. 

There is nothing in the narrative which would 
lead us to suppose that the institution was first 
given when Abel offered up that sacrifice to God ; 
it rather appears that he was only practising a 
custom already established ; but we may be very 
sure that the occurrence here recorded concerning 
Cain, was the first instance of fallen man's pre- 
senting himself before the Lord without a sin- 



ON SACRIFICE. 47 

offering. It was, therefore, naturally to be ex- 
pected, that God should show some signal mark 
of his displeasure at this rebellious conduct in his 
sinful creature. We are not to suppose that every 
previous sacrifice had met with an evident proof of 
its being accepted ; so full an account of this parti- 
cular instance, in so brief a narrative, shows that 
it was attended with some unusual circumstances. 
In fact, a brand is here set upon the first infidel : 
the occasion and circumstances of the first apos- 
tasy are recorded for our instruction in righteous- 
ness. These considerations lead us to look farther 
back for the origin of sacrifice ; and we shall soon 
see the probability that it was instituted by God 
immediately after the fall, and before the expul- 
sion of Adam from Paradise. 

This supposition receives confirmation from the 
circumstance, that God made coats of skins for 
our first parents, before he sent them forth from 
the Garden of Eden. The food of man, previously 
to the Fall, consisted of the fruit of the trees of 
Paradise ; how then are we to account for the 
death of those animals, whose skins, by the Divine 
gift, afforded a covering to our first parents. In 
their innocent state, they had no need of any 
covering ; and when, by sin, they were made 
sensible to their shame, Nature's device was to 
twist leafy twigs together for girdles ; their in- 
ward guilt she could not hide. The Almighty, 



48 ON SACRIFICE. 

however, ordained sacrifice as the instituted 
means of removing their moral guilt, and ap- 
pointed the skins as a more effectual covering to 
their natural shame ; and this provision did he 
make, lest in either case " they should walk naked 
and see their shame." 

Adam was not dispossessed of Paradise in 
anger : he left not that blessed abode, till he 
had heard from his Maker " the beginning of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ." Unto the serpent, God 
said, " I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his 
heel." The terms of this promise are, indeed, 
extremely concise and obscure ; yet thus much 
must surely have been concluded from them by 
our first parents : that one of their posterity should 
destroy the enemy who had undone them, and 
should liberate mankind from the penalties of 
their transgression, and restore them to the state 
in which they had been before the fall. That 
Adam did so understand it, may be fairly inferred 
from the name of Eve, which he gave to his wife, 
in consequence of the expected defeat of the ser- 
pent by the woman's seed. He previously knew 
that the penalty of disobedience was death : " In 
the day, that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely 
die." If, therefore, the promised seed was to 
counteract the malicious plot of the serpent, it 



ON SACRIFICE. 49 

must be by his procuring life for mankind. 
Those that should be thus delivered, and obtain 
life, Adam calls the living ; and because he ob- 
served, from what God had said, that deliverance 
and life should be derived from the seed of the 
woman, he changed her name to Eve (life) 
saying, " Because she is the mother of all 
living." 

It is not at all impossible that, before leaving 
Paradise, Adam might ask, and God might grant, 
some sign of this deliverance. Raised at once 
from the depths of despair, how ardently would 
he look forward to the promised Deliverer ! We 
can easily suppose him, like Abraham, to have 
longed to see the day of this seed of the woman. 
" Abraham longed to see my day, (says Christ) 
and he saw it, and was glad," (John viii. 56.) 
Bishop Warburton (Divine Legation, Book VI. 
sect. 5.) has given the best explanation of this 
passage concerning Abraham ; and the consi- 
deration of it will throw some light on the cir- 
cumstances of Adam. There are many points of 
similarity in the situation of these two patriarchs ; 
but I shall only notice that the promise of the 
Deliverer was first made to Adam ; and, after a 
long period of abeyance, was again solemnly 
renewed to Abraham — " In thy seed shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed." The Bishop 
states, that when God says to Abraham, Take 

E 



50 ON SACRIFICE. 

now thy son, thine only son Isaac, and offer him 
for a burnt-offering, &c. (Gen. xxii.) " the com- 
mand is merely an information by action, instead 
of words, of the great sacrifice of Christ for the 
redemption of mankind, given at the earnest 
request of Abraham, who longed impatiently to 
see Christ's day ; and is that passage of sacred 
history referred to by our Lord in John viii. 56. . . . 
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speak- 
ing of this very command, says, By faith, Abra- 
ham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, ac- 
counting that God was able to raise him up even 
from the dead, from whence also he received him 
in a figure, ev wapaf3o\y, in a parable : a mode of 
information either by words or actions, which 
consists in putting one thing for another. . . . 
Though Abraham did not indeed receive Isaac 
restored to life after a real dissolution, yet the 
son being in this action to represent Christ suf- 
fering death for the sins of the world, when the 
father brought him safe from Mount Moriah, 
after three days (during which the son was in a 
state of condemnation to death), the father plainly 
received him, under the character of Christ's 
representative, as restored from the dead. For, 
as his being brought to the Mount, there bound 
and laid upon the altar, figured the death and 
sufferings of Christ, so his being taken from 
thence alive, as properly figured Christ's resur- 



ON SACRIFICE. 51 

rection from the dead. With the highest pro- 
priety, therefore, and elegance of speech, might 
Abraham be said to receive Isaac from the dead 
in a parable, or in representation." — Now it seems 
to me almost as monstrous to suppose, either that 
Adam, who had not yet left Paradise, or that 
righteous Abel would take upon himself to imbrue 
his hands in the blood of an innocent animal with 
the view of expiating his sin against a holy God, 
as to think that Abraham would offer up Isaac 
without an express injunction from the Almighty. 
A Divine command must have been given in 
both cases ; and, as I suppose, in consequence of 
their earnest request to see Christ's day. Abra- 
ham saw Christ's day kv 7rapa/3oA>?, in the para- 
bolical representation of the sacrifice of Isaac ; 
Adam saw that same day ^t0M, in a similar 
but darker representation, under the parable of 
the first animal slain in sacrifice ; and I farther 
suppose that Adam, on this occasion, became in 
some degree acquainted with the very manner of 
the promised redemption : namely, that the seed 
of the woman should die to atone for the sins of 
mankind. 

To clear up the history of Cain and Abel, 
I shall first consider some exactly parallel circum- 
stances in the life of Esau and Jacob. In the 
former age, Abel (afterwards Seth) represented 
the holy seed, as Cain did that of the serpent ; 

e 2 



52 ON SACRIFICE. 

in the succeeding age, Israel typified the Church 
of God, and Edom all its enemies. 

Esau is declared to be a profane person, who 
for one morsel of meat sold his birthright, (Heb. 
xii. 16.) His faith in a Redeemer to come may 
be estimated by the lightness with which he 
resigned the high privilege, that the promised 
seed should spring from his family ; and his 
worldly, impure life, may be inferred from his 
taking wives from among the idolatrous Hittites, 
" which was a grief of mind unto Isaac and 
Rebekah." When Esau found that, with his 
birthright, he had also lost the temporal part 
of the blessing, " he hated Jacob, and said 
in his heart, The days of mourning for my father 
are at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob." 

This is an exact counterpart to the history of 
Cain and Abel. That Cain was a profane per- 
son before the murder of Abel, we learn from 
St. John, (1 Epistle iii. 12.) — " Wherefore slew 
he him ? because his own works were evil, and 
his brother's righteous." He also, like Esau, 
despised his birthright ; he slighted the promise 
of a Redeemer, which had been made to Adam, 
and might probably have been continued in his 
line. At the solemnities of their public worship, 
probably before the tabernacle, and on the Sab- 
bath day, Abel offered an expiatory sacrifice, 
believing that God would restore him to the 

7 



ON SACRIFICE. 53 

state of holiness from which his race had fallen ; 
but Cain merely brought an eucharistic offering, 
and did thus signify his acquiescence in his pre- 
sent corrupt condition. By omitting the piacular 
sacrifice, which was typical of a Redeemer, he re- 
jected, " him that should come," even the seed 
of the woman, that was to bruise the serpent's 
head. Yet, however much Cain despised his 
birthright, he could not bear to see its advantages 
transferred to another, as seemed to be intimated in 
God's acceptance, probably by fire (a), of Abel's 
sacrifice, and the rejection of his own offering ; so 
Cain was very wroth, and hated Abel. " And the 
Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and 
why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, 
shalt thou not be accepted ? And if thou doest not 
well, a sin offering lieth at the door (to make 
expiation) ; and unto thee shall be his desire, 
and thou shalt rule over him :" thou shalt 
still retain the privilege of thy birthright. 
But Cain was self-sufficient, and harboured re- 
sentment against his brother ; then was brought 
to light the first overt act of that enmity, which 
has ever since existed between the holy seed and 
the seed of the serpent. Like Esau, he coldly 
premeditated murder in his heart: for "Cain 
said unto Abel his brother, Let us go forth into 
the field ; and it came to pass, when they were in 
the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his bro- 



54 ON SACRIFICE. 

ther, and slew him." (b) Upon Abel's death, the 
birthright did not revert to Cain, as perhaps his 
blind jealousy had led him to expect ; but it was 
transferred to Seth, and probably by God's own 
appointment, " for God (^said Eve) hath ap- 
pointed me another seed instead of Abel." 

Cain was now brought under a curse ; his life 
indeed was assured to him, but he was shut out 
of communion with the Church, and no more saw 
" the presence (or glory) of the Lord" that dwelt 
between the cherubim, to reveal his will and ac- 
cept the sacrifices of his faithful people. The 
Almighty having thus openly rejected Cain, and 
having as clearly selected the family of Seth in 
the land of Eden as the depository of his word and 
ordinances, it was soon after thought suitable to 
assume a distinctive appellation as God's people. 
" And to Seth, to him also there was born a son, 
and he called his name Enos ; then began men to 
call themselves by the name of the Lord." The 
appellation was most probably that which after- 
wards occurs without explanation, " The sons of 
God." In like manner, when the Gentiles were 
admitted into the Church of Christ, it is re- 
marked, " the disciples were called Christians 
first in Antioch," (Acts xi. 26.) 

When Cain said unto the Lord, " Behold, thou 
hast driven me out this day from the face of the 
earth, and from thy face shall I be hid," it was 



ON SACRIFICE. 55 

out of regret for two things : first, his fugitive and 
comfortless state on leaving the land of his birth ; 
secondly, his exposure to human vengeance, as 
one rejected of the Lord and deprived of the 
common benefits of religion. Impenitent, he 
sought not forgiveness ; regardless of a future 
world, he confined his attention to security and 
comfort in this. Cain could not have been 
driven out from the face of the globe, but only 
from some particular region ; and we find that, 
under sentence of banishment direct from God, 
" he went out from (the country of Eden in 
which, between the cherubim, was manifested) 
the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of 
Nod, on the east of Eden." 

In this land, where the darkness of Satan was 
unbroken by any ray of divine light, did this 
seed of the serpent recover from his fears. His 
dread of punishment from the favoured race w r as 
soon converted (we may suppose) into hatred and 
persecution of them ; and his descendants would 
become the Edom and Assyria of the former 
world. We know that, in the latter days, the 
ante-diluvian Church sunk into a deep and fatal 
apostasy ; and it is probable that, on any appear- 
ance of a declining spirit, the Almighty did make 
the infidel Cainites an instrument in his hand to 
punish and reclaim his forgetful children, 



56 ON SACRIFICE. 

" Ho ! to the Assyrian, the rod of mine anger : 
In whose hand is the staff of mine indignation ! 
Against a dissembling nation will I send him, 
And against the people of my wrath will I charge him, 
To gather the spoil and to bear away the prey, 
And to trample them as mire in the street. 
But he doth not so purpose, 
And his heart doth not so intend ; 
But to destroy is in his heart, 
And to cut off nations not a few. 
But it shall be, 

When Jehovah hath ended his whole work 
Upon Mount Sion and upon Jerusalem, 
I will punish the proud heart of the king of Assyria, 
And the triumphant look of his haughty eyes." — Isaiah 



ESSAY VI. 

THE TRANSLATION AND PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 

The sacred narrative now passes on at once from 
the second to the seventh generation, but it then 
presents us with such a remarkable occurrence as 
enables us to judge of the fortunes of the Church 
in the intermediate period. The Patriarchal and 
Mosaic dispensations do each afford but a single 
instance of mortal man being removed from the 
earth to another state of existence without passing 
through the gates of death ; and it is reasonable 
to suppose that in both cases, very urgent and 
similar reasons led to this extraordinary mani- 
festation of Divine power. With the view of 
throwing some light on the history of Enoch, I 
shall briefly consider the character of the period 
in which Elijah lived. 

The first thing that strikes us with respect to 
Elijah is, that his lot was cast in pre-eminently 
wicked times. " Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil 
in the sight of the Lord above all that were before 
him." Through several of the previous reigns, 
the state of Israel had been troubled by scenes of 



58 THE TRANSLATION AND 

violence and apostasy ; but in the long reign of 
Ahab, idolatry reached a height unknown before 
that period: "Ahab did more to provoke the 
Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of 
Israel that were before him," (1 Kings xvi.) An 
idol now engrossed the worship due unto Jehovah ; 
Baal was God in Israel under the auspices of a 
Sidonian queen. A backsliding people would too 
easily be seduced by the example of an idolatrous 
court ; but God, who knows how to proportion 
means to occasions, assigned to this corruptest 
age the most eminent prophet that had appeared 
since the days of Moses. 

After the expulsion of Cain, the Church en- 
joyed a period of peace and happiness in its reli- 
gious privileges ; but worldly prosperity seems 
soon to have produced its usual effects of relaxa- 
tion in discipline and laxity in opinion ; and the 
enmity of Cain would occasionally be left unre- 
strained by Providence, that the wrath of man 
might work the righteousness of God in rousing 
his slumbering Church. These corrections, how- 
ever, seem to have had only a partial or tempo- 
rary result ; and the appearance of an Enoch 
authorizes us to suppose that by this time "the 
sons of God" had sunk into a state unworthy of 
their name. A sensual and presumptuous infidel 
was now at the head of the nations without the 
pale of the Church, which probably had been for 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 59 

some time reduced under his authority ; and 
either through terror, or by liberal compliances, 
had yielded to the general torrent of iniquity. 
Lamech, the son of Methusael, is the first on 
record that violated the original institution of 
marriage between one man and one woman ; and 
as Ahab was rebuked by Elijah, so I suppose that 
Enoch raised his voice against this powerful 
sinner for his sensuality and violence. " Behold, 
I will bring evil upon thee, and I will take away 
thy posterity," is the prophet's awful denunciation 
against Israel's king; and Enoch may have pro- 
nounced a similar fate upon the self-willed patri- 
arch. It is remarkable that the history makes no 
mention of Lamech's grandchildren, though the 
genealogy of Seth is carried down two genera- 
tions lower to the flood (a) ; and I suppose that 
some such denunciation as this gave occasion to 
Lamech's obscure speech to his wives (b). 

There is an ancient tradition, mentioned by 
Jerom and Chrysostom, that God preserved 
Cain's life for seven generations. Now because 
from Cain to this Lamech's children there are 
just seven generations inclusively, and because 
the word "Tubal" may be derived from n^2 to 
be worn out by length of time ; I therefore conceive 
that Lamech gave to one of his sons the name of 
Tubal Cain as a memorial of Cain's dying a 
natui^al death about that time in a good old age, 



60 THE TRANSLATION AND 

in spite of the murder of Abel ; and that, in de- 
fiance of Enoch's denunciation, he uttered the 
presumptuous thought that himself should like- 
wise escape the judgment of the Lord, and all the 
evil consequences of his own wicked life. He 
feared not God, neither regarded man, and consi- 
dered himself sufficient for his own defence. This 
is his arrogant language in the bosom of his 
family : 

" Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, 
Hearken unto my speech ; 
For man I slay on wounding me, 

And boy on hurting me. 
If sevenfold had been avenged Cain, 
Truly, Lamech, seventy and sevenfold." 

He defies evil at the hand of young or old • 
and vaunts that if Cain, who had to face the 
difficulties of a first settler, died in a good old 
age with a numerous posterity, there was little 
fear for Lamech under circumstances so much 
more favourable. But if his posterity was indeed 
taken from him, this Tubal Cain would have 
proved a sign of "the wearing out of Cain," in 
the chief line, to Lamech 's utter confusion ; and 
would have been a signal anticipation of the Lord's 
coming to execute judgment on the ungodly for 
all their hard speeches against him. 

This remark naturally leads me to the consi- 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 61 

deration of the prophecy itself: " Behold, the 
Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to 
execute judgment upon all, and to convince all 
that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly 
deeds which they have ungodly committed, and 
of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners 
have spoken against him," (Jude 14.) 

Although the complete and final accomplish- 
ment of Enoch's prophecy is yet in futurity, it 
received a partial and typical fulfilment at the 
flood, and is represented by St. Jude as bearing a 
similar application to his owm times. We are, 
therefore, led to expect some analogy between 
the character and fate of the respective gene- 
rations at the close of the ante-diluvian and 
Jewish ages. In fact, both sets of men were 
licentious infidels, and drew down upon them- 
selves a direct judgment from the Almighty : a 
judgment in mercy long foretold, and executed 
only against the continued impenitence of un- 
belief. It is my object to illustrate the earlier 
and more obscure of these events by means of 
the fuller information we have of the second. 

I begin with considering the prevalence of un- 
belief, and the judgment it drew on, in the last 
days of the Jewish age. The destruction of Jeru- 
salem is represented by our Lord as a judgment 
upon the unbelieving Jews, and their consequent 
loss of civil power as a great deliverance to their 



62 THE TRANSLATION AND 

believing brethren. " When they persecute you 
in this city, flee ye into another, for verily I 
say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the 
cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come, 1 ' 
(Mat. x.) " But before all these things they shall 
lay their hands on you, and persecute you .... 
And when these things begin to come to pass, 
then look up, for your redemption draweth nigh," 
(Luke xxi.) " Shall not God avenge his own 
elect? I tell you that he will avenge them 
speedily ; nevertheless, when the Son of Man 
cometh, shall he find faith on the earth ?" (Luke 
xviii.) (c). The prophetic intimations of the New 
Testament are so framed as not to receive their 
full completion in the direful close of the Jewish 
dispensation ; yet there can be no doubt that its 
warnings and descriptions refer to the men of that 
generation, and that the strongest expressions in 
the Epistles did personally concern those to whom 
they were directly addressed. Let us see what 
information they afford us concerning the infide- 
lity and licentiousness of the last times of the 
Jewish age. St. John, writing at the close of that 
dispensation, a. d. 69, says : — " Little children, it 
is the last time ; and as ye have heard that anti- 
christ shall come, even now are there many anti- 
christs, whereby we know that it is the last time," 
(1 John ii. 18.) St. Jude, who wrote nearly at 
the same time, states the same fact :— " There are 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 63 

certain men crept in unawares, who were before of 
old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, 
turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, 
and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus 
Christ . . . But, beloved, remember ye the words 
which were spoken before of the Apostles of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, how they told you there should 
be mockers in the last time, who should walk 
after their own ungodly lusts." The references 
here made by John and Jude to previous Apos- 
tolic notices concerning the unbelievers of the last 
time, are to be found in the Epistles of Peter and 
Paul, who wrote somewhat earlier. " This know 
also, that in the last days perilous times shall 
come ; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, 
covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, &c. from 
such turn (thou) away." (2 Tim. iii.) The con- 
cluding admonition plainly shows that the indivi- 
dual addressed was to be personally concerned 
with these lawless characters of the last days. 
" There shall be false teachers among you, who 
privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even 
denying the Lord that bought them, and bring 
upon themselves swift destruction. But chiefly 
them that walk after the flesh in the lust of un- 
cleanness, and despise government : presumptuous 
are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak 
evil of dignities." (2 Pet. ii.) These passages 
from Scripture are prophetic descriptions of the 



64 THE TRANSLATION AND 

men whose character is thus summarily recorded 
in history. " Whilst they trampled under foot 
every human law, they ridiculed religion, and 
scoffed at the oracles of the prophets, as the fictions 
of impostors." (Josephus, Jewish War, iv. 6.) 
" Had the Romans delayed to come against these 
execrable persons, I believe either the earth would 
have swallowed up, or a deluge would have swept 
away their city, or fire from heaven would have 
consumed it, as it did Sodom ; for it brought 
forth a generation of men far more wicked than 
they who suffered such things." (Ibid. lib. v. 13.) 
The men of that generation both heard these 
prophecies, and saw their primary fulfilment ; 
but the men who shall live in the last days of 
another age, shall see a more full and terrible 
completion. 

These remarks will serve to illustrate the last 
days of the antediluvian age, and to show the 
character of that generation which brought on 
such a grievous judgment as the coming of the 
Son of Man at the flood. I shall begin with the 
notices in the New Testament ; and then point 
out how far these agree with, and throw light 
upon, the brief history of those times, as recorded 
by Moses. 

St. Peter distinctly characterizes the men of 
that age as unbelievers: "who formerly disbe- 
lieved when once the long-suffering of God waited 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 65 

in the days of Noah, while the ark was a prepar- 
ing." And our Saviour marks it as a sensual 
age : " In the days that were before the flood, 
they were eating and drinking, marrying and 
giving in marriage, until the day that Noah en- 
tered the ark." It is from St. Jude, however, 
that we learn with the greatest clearness the 
nature of the reigning vices. He is illustrating 
the conduct of the infidels of his own day from 
similar characters before the flood, but his remarks 
reflect light on the antediluvian times. He lived 
to see the rise of " ungodly men, turning the 
grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying 
Jesus Christ, our only Master, God and Lord ;" 
and he asserts that Enoch's prophecy concerning 
the Lord's coming in judgment on the unbelievers 
at the end of the antediluvian age, points out a 
sure destruction to the mockers whom he saw 
around him. ''And Enoch also, the seventh 
from Adam, prophesied of these, saying : Behold, 
the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints 
to execute judgment upon all, and to convince 
all that are ungodly among them of all their 
ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly com- 
mitted, and of all their hard Speeches which un- 
godly sinners have spoken against him" that 
should come, o spyon'cvog, (John xi. 27.) We might 
fill up this bold outline of infidelity, drawn by 
Enoch, with minuter lineaments borrowed from 

F 



66 THE TRANSLATION AND 

Peter and Paul ; but the prophecy itself points 
out with sufficient clearness the licentious prac- 
tices and blasphemous scoffings of the infidels 
that were to appear in the last times of the ante- 
diluvian age, before the coming of the Lord in 
judgment at the flood. The Patriarchal, Mosaic, 
and Christian prophecies concerning the Lord's 
coming, do all refer, ultimately, to the same 
awful event ; but they were more immediately 
connected with the interests of the particular dis- 
pensation under which they were delivered. The 
Patriarchs gave timely warning of the impending 
destruction at the end of the antediluvian age, 
and the Apostles afforded sufficient intimation of 
the impending wrath in the last days of the 
Jewish age. " Behold, the Lord cometh," says 
Enoch: " The Lord is at hand," says St. Paul, 
(Phil. iv. 5.) St. James v. 8. repeats, " The 
coming of the Lord draweth nigh." 

It is only natural to suppose that Enoch's pro- 
phetic office was not completed in the delivery of 
a few sentences. There, doubtless, were other 
intimations from the Spirit ; and among these 
might be placed, with some show of probability, 
the name which he gave to his son Methuselah, 
which signifies "his death shall send;" at any 
rate, it is a remarkable coincidence that the flood 
immediately followed upon his decease. From 
some such intimation which determined the time, 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 67 

we may suppose that Lamech gave to his son the 
name of Noah, either in the hope that he might 
be the very seed of the woman, or as a sign ex- 
pressive of his belief that the curse, which had 
been brought upon the ground through the ser- 
pent, should be taken off by the coming of the 
promised deliverer in that generation. "He called 
his name Noah, saying, This same shall give us 
rest from our labour, And from the burthen of 
our hands from the ground, Which the Lord 
hath cursed." But man must first find rest from 
the labour and burthen of his soul through the 
true Noah, before he can be rendered fit for the 
new heavens and the new earth " wherein is the 
tree of life, and where there shall be no more 
curse," (Rev. xxii.) (d). 

" Come unto me, all ye who labour and are burthened, 
And I will give you rest ; 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, 
For I am meek and lowly in heart, 
And ye shall find rest unto your souls ; 
For my yoke is easy, and my burthen light." 

Matthew xi. 28. 

That generation of the former world, which was 
of such extraordinary wickedness as to bring on 
the destruction of their whole race, could not 
fail to hold a conspicuous place in the traditions 

f 2 



68 THE TRANSLATION AND 

ary history of the replenished world. Accord- 
ingly, Moses speaks of them as well known cha- 
racters, in these terms: " There were turbulent 
men (e) in the earth in those days ; but also 
after that, when the sons of God came in unto 
the daughters of men, and children were born 
unto them, these were the ancient lawless ones, 

those noted men Every imagination of the 

thoughts of their heart was only evil continually, 
and the earth was rilled with violence because of 
them," (Gen. vi.) The author of Ecclesiasticus, 
who has many references to ancient traditions, 
intimates, (xvi. 7.) that the flood was brought on 
by the licentiousness of unbelief. Infidelity en- 
tered into the world in the person of Cain. By 
refusing to offer up an expiatory sacrifice to the 
Lord, he avowed his disbelief in the atonement 
of a Redeemer. His principles extended so widely 
with his posterity, that, in the seventh generation, 
God saw good to raise up a conspicuous witness 
to the truth. In this time of wickedness, the 
translation of Enoch afforded new assurance to 
the faithful, and his prophecy spoke in tones of 
authority to call the infidel to repentance. Yet, 
for all this, they sinned more and more. There 
were licentious unbelievers in those days ; in 
the ninth generation these did so prevail, as uni- 
versally to seduce the worshippers of God into 



PROPHECY OF ENOCH. 69 

family alliances, the offspring of which was a race 
that outdid all former generations in the licen- 
tious excesses of infidelity. But their punish- 
ment was commensurate with their guilt : " the 
flood came and took them all away." 



ESSAY VII. 

ON THE EXPECTATION OF THE LORD'S COMING. 

The previous Essay sufficiently shows the real 
meaning of the Lord's coming foretold by Enoch ; 
it is the object of the present one to explain what 
the Antediluvians actually understood by that 
coming, and to point out the probable effects 
which followed upon their sense of the matter. 

Although Enoch's prophecy may have been 
addressed immediately to the Church of God, we 
cannot but suppose that the whole world received 
sufficient warning and a timely call to repentance, 
before the Lord brought a Hood of waters to de- 
stroy all flesh. Indeed, this seems to be implied 
in the expression, " My Spirit shall not always 
strive with man." All flesh had corrupted his 
way upon the earth; and, it would seem, all had 
resisted the striving of God's Spirit, speaking in 
their consciences and by means of his prophets. 
Towards the end of the Jewish age, our Saviour 
declares that cc this Gospel of the kingdom shall 
be preached in all the world for a witness unto 
all nations, and then shall the end come," (Matt. 



ON THE EXPECTATION OF THE LORD'S COMING. 71 

xxiv. 14.) ; and St. Paul incidentally mentions to 
the Colossians, (i. 6. 23) that the Gospel was come, 
not to them only, but to all the world, and was 
preached to every creature under heaven (a). 
Now there was, at least, an equal necessity that 
the coming of the Lord to bring an universal de- 
struction on mankind should be preached to every 
creature before this end came ; and I suppose that 
the object was attained in both cases by the same 
means. As was formerly observed, there is a 
constant enmity between the holy seed and the 
seed of the serpent ; and I conceive that the 
idolatrous descendants of Gain in the land of Nod 
became, at various times, the appointed instru- 
ments of God to chasten and carry captive any 
fruitless branches of his Church ; so that, besides 
the Church resident in Eden at the time of the 
deluge, there were also Churches of the disper- 
sion. And it is probable, that it was by means 
of the various prophets who were raised up, and 
sent to his own people among the heathen, that 
the Lord proclaimed his controversy with the na- 
tions, and did plead with all flesh. 

Perhaps from the first, the idolatrous nations 
turned a deaf ear to the solemn warning that the 
Lord should come ; but true believers, such as 
the father of Noah, seem to have thought that 
the time was now arrived for the fulfilment of all 
God's gracious promises; that the long expected 



72 ON THE EXPECTATION 

seed of the woman was at length to appear ; and 
that, by bruising the serpent's head, he should 
take off the curse from the ground, and restore 
fallen man to his innocent and holy estate in the 
garden of the Lord. At least, something like this 
seems implied in the name which he gave to his 
son Noah, saying, " This same shall give us rest 
from our labour, And from the burthen of our 
hands from the ground, Which the Lord hath 
cursed." But such as entertained these spiritual 
thoughts and holy aspirations, were but as a 
little flock among ravening wolves ; and, with 
very few exceptions, seem to have totally dis- 
appeared with the last surviving members of the 
ninth generation. The tenth and last race of 
the antediluvians were the exact type of those 
worldly and ambitious Jews, who lived in the 
last clays of the Jewish age, and drew from their 
Lord that severe rebuke, " Ye serpents, ye 
generation of vipers !" But as these formed the 
great body of the Church during the preaching 
of Noah, they require a corresponding share of 
our attention. 

It is probable that the first intimation of the 
promised seed was followed up, at suitable inter- 
vals, with clearer promises of redemption ; and 
that the more frequently repeated voice of pro- 
phecy in the latter days had excited, just before 
the flood, a general expectation of some approach- 



OF THE LORD'S COMING. 73 

ing change by a great deliverer ; as we know was 
the case for about a century before the destruction 
of Jerusalem. The Jews expected, under the 
reign of their Messiah, a triumphal deliverance 
from all their temporal enemies, and the realiza- 
tion of a golden age with peace, plenty, and length 
of days ; according to the literal acceptation of 
the words of their prophet, (Isa. lxv.) 

" Ye shall rejoice and exult in the age to come, which I create ; 
For lo ! I create Jerusalem a subject of joy ; and her people, 

of gladness. 
And there shall not be heard any more therein 
The voice of weeping, and the voice of a distressful cry. 
No more shall be there an infant short lived, 
Nor an old man who hath not fulfilled his days ; 
For he that dieth at an hundred years shall die a boy, 
And the sinner that dieth at a hundred years shall be ac- 
cursed. 

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, 
And the lion shall eat straw like the ox ; 
But as for the serpent, dust shall be his food. 
They shall not hurt, neither shall they destroy, 
In all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah." 

That similar hopes were entertained in the an- 
tediluvian Church is evident from the case of the 
Sethite Lamech, who at the very least expected 
the removal of the curse from the ground ; and 
we may easily conceive how such an expectation 



74 ON THE EXPECTATION 

would become debased among the totally worldly 
members of the Church. It was the disappoint- 
ment of their selfish and ill-founded imaginations, 
as to the effects which were to be wrought by our 
great spiritual Deliverer, that hastened on the 
catastrophe of both dispensations ; and probably, 
these nominal disciples of their Lord, proceeded 
by the very same steps in their downward course 
to infidelity. Some, who were supported against 
actual persecution by a heated imagination con- 
cerning the happiness of Paradise, laboured under 
mental delusion to the very last ; whilst others, 
not brooking the slightest delay to their pleasures, 
first became less disposed to bear up against any 
persecution which their nominal profession might 
bring upon them, and then openly apostatized 
from the faith ; these anticipated by violence 
those sensual gratifications, the enjoyment of 
which in the Paradisaical Church was their only 
ground of attachment to her. 

From Enoch to the flood, the same motives and 
passions seem to have been at work, as actuated 
the Jews from the preaching of the Baptist to the 
destruction of Jerusalem. This latter period is 
accurately described in the prophecy of our Lord, 
(Matt, xxiv.) ; and almost all the particulars of it 
are so applicable in principle to the former period, 
that it may serve as an answer to the inquiry, 



OF THE LORD'S COMING. 75 

" When shall these things be ? and what shall be 
the sign of the Lord's coming, and of the end of 
the antediluvian age ?" 

The first in order of the signs is this : " Take 
heed that no man deceive you, for many shall 
come in my name, saying, I am Christ ; and shall 
deceive many." History informs us, that in con- 
sequence of the general expectation of " Him 
that should come," there appeared among the 
Jews many pretenders to that character. Such 
was Dositheus, who said he was the Christ fore- 
told by Moses ; and Simon Magus, (Acts viii. 9.) 
who, according to Origen, " appeared among the 
Jews as the Son of God." I have endeavoured to 
render it probable that there was a general ex- 
pectation of some great deliverer towards the end 
of the antediluvian age ; and if the pious Lamech 
could say in religious hope concerning his son, 
" This same shall give us rest," &c. we may be 
very certain that others would take advantage of 
this state of public opinion, and give themselves 
out as the promised seed of the woman. 

Again : "Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of 
wars ; see that ye be not troubled, for all these 
things must come to pass ; but the end is not yet. 
All these are the beginning of sorrows," (says our 
Saviour) ; and Moses thus describes the state of 
the antediluvian world, " the earth was filled 
with violence through them." 



76 ON THE EXPECTATION 

" Many false prophets shall rise and deceive 
many." Josephus mentions an Egyptian magi- 
cian, who said he was a prophet, and deceived 
many ; as also one Theudas, who persuaded a 
great multitude with their best effects to follow 
him to the river Jordan, for he said he was a 
prophet, and promised to divide the river for 
their passage. In short, wherever God has raised 
up true prophets, Satan has set up false ; so that 
we may rest assured that Enoch and his holy 
company were met by a band of a very different 
character. Even when the Jewish temple was 
in flames, a false prophet made public proclama- 
tion that God commanded them to get up upon 
the temple, and that there they should receive 
miraculous signs of their deliverance ; to whom 
about six thousand gave heed, aud paid the 
forfeit of their lives. In like manner, even after 
the flood was upon the earth, and the waters 
were now rapidly gaining ground on the highest 
mountains, there may have arisen some audacious 
fanatic, who led his deluded followers to some 
particular eminence with promises of help from 
God. 

" Because iniquity shall abound, the love of 
many shall wax cold." Many Jews did apostatize 
from the faith because of the abounding injustice 
and persecution of those times ; and we learn 
from Moses, that in the days when there were 



OF THE LORD'S COMING. 77 

violent men in the earth, " the sons of God" 
began to be conformed to the world, and at length 
altogether broke down the antiquated and illiberal 
distinction by forming connexions with the infidel 
families in marriage. 

" Immediately after the tribulation of those 
days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon 
shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall 
be shaken ; and then shall appear the sign of the 
Son of Man in heaven ; and then shall all the 
tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the 
Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
power and great glory. And he shall send his 
angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they 
shall gather together his elect from the four w T inds, 
from one end of heaven to the other." This 
holds precisely the same place in the prophecy 
of our Lord, as the only preserved part does in 
the prophecy of Enoch : " Behold, the Lord 
cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute 
judgment," &c. 

We come now to a distinctly connecting link 
between the two periods which I have been com- 
paring. " As the days of Noah were (at the 
Lord's coming foretold by Enoch), so shall also 
the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the 
days that were before the flood they were eating 
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, 



78 ON THE EXPECTATION 

until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 
and knew not until the flood came and took them 
all away ; so shall also the coming of the Son of 
Man he (at the end of the Jewish age). Watch, 
therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord 
doth come," But because, in either case, they 
did not immediately see a sign from heaven, 
neither did witness the coming of the Lord in 
the clouds of heaven with ten thousand of his 
saints to effectuate the glorious change they were 
expecting, they fell away from the faith ; they 
were disappointed of their worldly expectations ; 
and, therefore, became sensual and turbulent infi- 
dels. They walked after their own lusts, saying, 
" Where is the promise of his coming ? for, since 
the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they 
were from the beginning of the creation." Those 
evil servants had thought in their heart, " My 
Lord delayeth his coming," and they began to 
smite their fellow-servants, and to eat and drink 
with the drunken. That such was the case with 
the apostate Jews, before the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, is clearly recorded in history; and with respect 
to the antediluvians, we learn from our Saviour 
that " they were eating and drinking, marrying 
and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah en- 
tered the ark ;" and Moses informs us, that they 
intermarried with the infidel Cainites, and that 
" the earth was filled with violence through them." 



OF THE LORD'S COMING. 79 

Yet " the Lord of that evil servant shall come in a 
day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour 
that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, 
and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites : 
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 
This denunciation was fully accomplished, when, 
on the one hand, the flood came and took them 
all away ; and, on the other, when the Roman 
armies nearly extirpated the nation at the subver- 
sion of the Jewish polity. 

" Who then is that faithful and wise servant, 
whom his Lord hath made ruler over his house- 
hold, to give them meat in due season? Blessed 
is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, 
shall find so doing. Verily, I say unto you, that 
he shall make him ruler over all his goods." 
The servant who continued constant in the faith, 
under all the persecutions and abounding iniqui- 
ties of those times, were the Christians, whose 
faith was rewarded by their escape to Pella, 
where they found safety. At the time of the 
flood, Noah alone was that faithful servant ; he 
found safety in the ark, and received a literal 
fulfilment of the promise, " Verily, I say unto 
you, that he shall make him ruler over all his 
goods (6)." 

What a scene of wickedness did our world 
present ! God looked upon the earth, and, be- 
hold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted 

7 



80 ON THE EXPECTATION OF THE LORD'S COMING. 

his way upon the earth. Yet, peradventure, there 
may be fifty righteous in the earth, and the Lord 
will spare it for their sakes ; but, no ! not ten 
can be found in a whole world. Noah, however, 
found grace in the eyes of the Lord ; and for 
what reason ? Not sweeter to the Lord was the 
savour of his sacrifice (Gen. viii. 21.) than the 
odour which still breathes fragrant from the 
undying memorial of this holy man : 

" This is the record of Noah : 
Noah was a just man, 
Perfect was he in his ways ; 
With God walked Noah.'* 

Therefore, the Lord said unto Noah, come thou 
and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I 
seen righteous before me in this generation. And 
it came to pass after seven days, that the waters 
of the flood were upon the earth. 



ESSAY VIII. 

ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

The history of our world is briefly summed up in 
the original curse on the serpent : " I will put 
enmity between thee and the woman, and be- 
tween thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy 
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is 
the contest that is continually carrying on between 
Jesus (the Saviour), and Satan (the Adversary) ; 
between the believer in Christ and the follower of 
Antichrist ; but the issue of the warfare is autho- 
ritatively determined beforehand. A period of 
darkness (a) was necessary to the fulness of the 
Divine plans, as well in the moral as the natural 
world, — " thou shalt bruise his heel ;" but the 
victory is Christ's in the battle of that great day 
of God Almighty, — " He shall bruise thy head." 

There is ever, then, in the earth a seed of the 
serpent, who are at enmity with Christ, and love 
the things of the world ; and it appears that the 
heir of the world was the first-born of the Devil. 
St. John informs us that " Cain was of that wicked 
one, that old serpent, which is called the Devil 



82 ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

and Satan," for he rejected a Redeemer in 
despising sacrifice ; and all those who have since 
been actuated by the same sentiments, are said to 
walk "in the way of Cain." According to St. 
Jude, such characters began to increase in the 
time of Enoch, who (he asserts) prophesied against 
such as were " ungodly men, turning the grace 
of God into lasciviousness, and denying Jesus 
Christ our only Master, God, and Lord." Enoch 
announced the day of the Lord : " Behold, the 
Lord cometh ;" but that day did not come, until 
there came a falling away first in the Church of 
God : " the sons of God went in unto the daugh- 
ters of men," having been seduced into the licen- 
tious practices of infidelity. The first act of faith 
was exercised by Adam, when he called his wife's 
name Eve, because she was the mother of all 
living — of all that live in Christ ; the spirit of 
Antichrist was first manifested in the offering of 
Cain, but it continued silently at work and gra- 
dually leavened the whole world. In the last 
days, when Antichrist was so strongly developed 
as to leave no place for repentance, the Almighty, 
whose Spirit will not always strive with man, no 
longer delayed the punishment he had threatened 
by his prophet Enoch : and that age closed with 
the coming of the Son of Man to vindicate his 
name, and execute judgment on the unbeliever : — 
" the flood came and took them all away." 



ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 83 

The children of Israel did often rebel against 
the Angel of the Lord that led them, and thereby 
tempted Christ ; but the spirit of Antichrist was 
more openly displayed— the seed of the serpent 
had acquired greater power in the last days of the 
Jewish dispensation. When John the Baptist 
warned his hearers that the axe was already laid 
unto the root of the trees, he reproved them as 
"a generation of vipers." Our Saviour more 
plainly declared concerning the Antichristian 
Jews, " Ye are of your father the Devil," that 
old Serpent, and addressed them, " Ye serpents, 
ye generation of vipers." Immediately before the 
subversion of the Jewish polity in Church and 
State, a.d. 69, St. John writes : " Little children, 
it is the last time ; and as ye have heard that 
Antichrist shall come, even now are there many 
Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last 
time." (1 John ii. 18.) Which declaration 
may be thus explained from St. Jude : — " there 
are certain men crept in unawares, ungodly men, 
turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and 
denying Jesus Christ our only Master, God, and 
Lord." The Apostles had frequently announced 
that the day of the Lord was at hand, yet here 
also (in a subordinate sense) that day did not 
come, until there came a falling away first in the 
Church of Christ. " Even now are there many 
Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last 

g 2 



84 ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

time ; they went out from us, but they were not 
of us." " There are certain men crept in (to the 
Church) unawares . . . denying Jesus Christ." 
" There shall be false teachers among you, who 
privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even 
denying the Lord that bought them .... If after 
they have escaped the pollutions of the world, 
through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, 
Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein 
and overcome, the latter end is worse with them 
than the beginning." (2 Pet. ii.) When the Jews 
continued obstinately to shut their eyes upon 
the things that belonged unto their peace, the Al- 
mighty no longer delayed the threatened punish- 
ment ; and that age closed with the coming of 
the Son of Man to vindicate his name, and execute 
judgment on the unbeliever : u the Romans came, 
and took away their place and nation." 

If the disciples were concerned to know, " What 
shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of 
the age," so also are we ; for " these things were 
written for our admonition, upon whom the ends 
of the ages are come." We are at present living 
towards the close of another age, " the times of 
the Gentiles ;" the last days of which will also be 
marked by an open manifestation of the spirit of 
Antichrist, and by a direct judgment from God. 
In his Dissertation on the Prophecies (1793), 
David Levi infers from Isaiah alone that there 



ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 85 

will be a general restoration of Israel, particularly 
of the ten tribes ; and that the appointed time of 
redemption will not be prevented by the great 
number of sinners amongst the Jews, who will 
then be cut off, &c. (Vol. ii. p. 92.) There is 
reason for believing that a great body of the Jews 
will be brought back to Palestine in their uncon- 
verted state by some powerful antichristian nation 
for its own political purposes (b). At that period, 
all the splendid promises will be fulfilled to the 
ancient people of God , but such of them as 
remain obdurate, will, together with the anti- 
christian nation, be cut off in their infidel state 
by some manifest judgment from the Almighty ; 
and this age also will close with the coming of 
the Son of Man to vindicate his name and exe- 
cute judgment on the unbeliever: " The Lord 
my God shall come and all his saints with him.' , 
(Zech. xiv. 5. Abp. Newcome.) But as the 
event is still future, time alone can reveal the 
particulars of the judgment, which this coming 
of the Son of Man portends. 

In that day, the spirit of Antichrist will not be 
confined to the Jews alone ; it will pervade the 
nominally Christian nations, who will then find 
it convenient, from political considerations, to 
take the part of the unconverted Jews. In this 
manner Antichrist would identify itself with the 
Jewish people. The coming of the Son of Man, 



86 ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

at the destruction of Jerusalem, was to punish the 
spirit of infidelity among the Jews ; therefore, 
Antichrist was in that case a Jew, and was put 
down in Palestine. The coming of the Son of 
Man again, will be to put down the spirit of infi- 
delity among the Jews, after their return to the 
Holy Land under the protection of the infidel 
nations. In this sense, then, the approaching 
Antichrist may be said to be a Jew, and to come 
to his end in Palestine. And, probably, this is 
the true meaning of the ancient tradition of the 
Fathers, that " Antichrist should be a Jew, that 
he should descend from the tribe of Dan, that he 
should come from Babylon, should fix his resi- 
dence in Jerusalem, and perish there." (Jerome.) 
"When Jacob blessed his sons, he spoke such 
things concerning Dan, that it has been thought 
that Antichrist would spring from that tribe." 
(Augustine. Vid. Bp. Newton, Dissertation 14.) 
When Jacob foretold his sons what should befal 
them in the last days, (Gen. xlix.) he said of Dan, 
" Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes 
of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an 
adder in the path, that biteth the horseheels, so 
that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited 
for thy salvation, O Lord." This prophecy was 
viewed in connexion with Jer. viii. 16. " The 
snorting of his horses was heard from Dan ; the 
whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing 



ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 87 

of his strong ones ; for they are come, and have 
devoured the land, and all that is in it : the city, 
and those that dwell therein. For, behold, I will 
send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will 
not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the 
Lord." Now both these prophecies make express 
mention of the serpent, which is the emblem of 
Satan and the mark of Antichrist ; and it is not 
at all impossible that the Danites may take a 
leading part in that " generation of vipers," which 
shall hold the principles of infidelity in the last 
days. Thus Antichrist may be a Jew, and of the 
tribe of Dan ; that he shall come from Babylon, 
perhaps intimates no more than that he shall 
appear at the return of the ten tribes from the 
East; or it may have some reference to the spiritual 
Babylon, the church of Rome (c). 

At the close of the thousand years, when Satan 
shall be loosed for a little while, a generation of 
vipers, the seed of the serpent, will immediately 
appear (Rev. xx. 7.) ; and this age also will close 
with the coming of the Son of Man to vindicate 
his name, and execute judgment, not only on the 
unbeliever, but upon the great Author of unbelief. 

Thus the ends of the ages are marked (as has 
been shown) by the punishment of licentious infi- 
delity ; yet the judgment falls not on guilty man, 
until timely warning, sufficient for repentance, has 
been given and despised. 



88 ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

Before the end of the Jewish age, John the 
Baptist came preaching and saying, " Repent ye, 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Even now 
the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. He that 
cometh after me is mightier than I ; whose fan is 
in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his 
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner, but he 
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." 
Towards the close of the antediluvian age came 
the prophet Enoch with a similar burden : " Be- 
hold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his 
saints, to execute judgment on the ungodly." 

He gave to his son the name of Methuselah, 
which signifies his death shall send ; and the flood 
immediately followed upon his decease. Now if 
we consider this name as prophetical of the time 
when the Lord should come, we may compare it 
with the warning of John, that the judgment was 
at hand, even now the axe, &c. ; or with the more 
explicit declaration of our Saviour, that the Son 
of Man should come in that generation. 

Again : At the first announcement, the nature 
of the Lord's coming was equally misunderstood 
in both cases. When Lamech called his son's 
name Noah, saying, " This same shall give us 
rest from our labour, and from the burthen of our 
hands from the ground, which the Lord hath 
cursed," he evidently expected a temporal de- 
liverance. Under a similar misapprehension, the 



ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 89 

two sons of Zebedee requested of the Messiah to 
sit, the one on his right hand and the other on the 
left, when he came in his kingdom ; and when 
the Lord said concerning the Apostle St. John, 
" If I will that he tarry till I come," there went 
this saying abroad among the brethren, " That 
that disciple should not die." 

A little before the destruction of Jerusalem, the 
solemn warning was urgently repeated by the 
Apostles, particularly by St. James, who was 
Bishop of Jerusalem, and witnessed the licentious 
infidelity of the devoted city. His Epistle was 
written about ten years before the dreadful con- 
summation, and the last chapter is full of strong 
denunciations and exhortations : " Weep and 
howl, for your miseries that shall come upon you : 
ye have heaped treasure together for the last 
days : ye have nourished your hearts as in a day 
of slaughter. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto 
the coming of the Lord : stablish your hearts, for 
the coming of the Lord draweth nigh : Behold, 
the Judge standeth before the door." One 
hundred and twenty years before the deluge, 
which space corresponds with ten years of man's 
present life, came Noah and repeated the solemn 
warning: " Behold, the Lord doth bring a flood 
of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, and 
every thing that is in the earth shall die." 

Hence it is evident that the respective genera- 



90 ANTICHRIST PAST AND TO COME. 

tions, which lived at the close of the antediluvian 
and Jewish ages, were sufficiently advertised of 
the approaching judgment. Enoch was sent 
before the great and terrible day of the Lord at 
the flood ; and John the Baptist came before the 
impending wrath at the subversion of the Jewish 
polity. Neither yet hath the Lord forgotten to 
be gracious ; for, according to a prophecy not yet 
fully accomplished, he will give timely warning 
before the coming judgment at the close of " the 
times of the Gentiles," when the Jews will be 
converted, and acknowledge him whom they have 
pierced. " Behold, I will send you Elijah the 
prophet before the great and terrible day of the 
Lord come, that he may convert the heart of the 
fathers together with the children,' 1 &c. (Mai. 
iv. 5.) But this interesting prophecy shall form 
the subject of a separate Essay. 



ESSAY IX. 

ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

The general expectation entertained by the Jews 
of our Saviour's time, as to the approach of him 
that should redeem Israel, shows how effectually 
the word of prophecy had answered its purposed 
end. But the care of the Almighty went a step 
farther ; he sent a harbinger to prepare the way 
before the Messiah, and to make ready men's 
minds to receive the Gospel of his kingdom. This 
preparatory preacher, too, had a place assigned 
him in the page of prophecy. He is first alluded 
to by the evangelical prophet, as " The voice of 
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way 
of the Lord, make his paths straight." He is sub- 
sequently marked out more clearly by the prophet 
Malachi : " Behold, I will send my messenger, 
and he shall prepare the way before me, and the 
Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his 
temple." Another coming of the Son of Man is 
largely spoken of by the company of prophets, 
and is principally mentioned under the name of 
" that great and terrible day of the Lord." This 

7 



92 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

epoch is in like manner to be announced by a 
forerunner, who will be endued with a larger 
portion of the spirit, and attended with a greater 
demonstration of power : " Behold, I will send 
unto you Elijah the prophet, before the great and 
terrible day of the Lord come, that he may con- 
vert the heart of the fathers together with the 
children, and the heart of the children together 
with their fathers, lest I come and smite the land 
with a curse." — (Abp. Newcome's translation.) 
These two forerunners are sufficiently distinguished 
by the time of their appearance and the object of 
their mission. " The messenger" was to appear 
during the existence of the temple, to proclaim 
the approach of the kingdom of heaven ; " Elijah 
the prophet" will not be sent till the coming of 
the great and terrible day of the Lord, and is then 
to be God's chief instrument in the general con- 
version of the Jews. 

From the anticipation of prophecy let us now 
turn to the record of history. There was in the 
days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest 
named Zacharias, and his wife was of the daugh- 
ters of Aaron ; and they were both righteous 
before God, and they had no child, being now 
well stricken in years. To this righteous pair 
did God promise a son in their old age by the 
mouth of the angel Gabriel, who at the same 
time did thus declare his high destiny : "Many 



ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 93 

of the children of Israel shall he convert to the 
Lord their God ; and he shall go before Him in 
the spirit and power of Elias, to convert the heart 
of the fathers with the children." But the spirit 
and power of Elijah had been already clearly 
defined by Malachi ; and John was partially to 
effect, at the introduction of the Gospel dispen- 
sation, what Elijah was gloriously to complete at 
the thorough establishment of Messiah's kingdom. 
And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, 
and was in the deserts till the day of his showing 
unto Israel. When that time arrived, and John 
came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and 
saying, " Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand," the appearance of such a remarkable 
character, at a time when all men were musing 
in their hearts concerning the approaching change, 
could not fail to draw general attention. Accord- 
ingly we find that private persons of every des- 
cription immediately crowded to his baptism ; 
and we soon after hear that the Sanhedrim sent 
a deputation of priests from Jerusalem, "to ask 
him, Who art thou ? And he confessed, and denied 
not ; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And 
they asked him, What then ? Art thou Elias ? 
And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet ? 
And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, 
Who art thou ? that we may give an answer to 
them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself ? 



94 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

He said, I am the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as 
said the prophet Esaias." (John i. 19.) In this 
passage, John the Baptist clearly asserts himself 
to be a preparatory preacher, distinct from the 
prophet Elijah ; and I think this view of the 
subject will throw a clear light on some passages 
of the Gospels, which cannot as yet be said to 
have received a straightforward and satisfactory 
explanation (a). 

In the discourse recorded bv St. Matthew, xi. 7. 
our Saviour quotes both the predictions of Malachi, 
but with a marked distinction in their application. 
Without any qualifying expressions whatever, he 
states in the plainest manner concerning John the 
Baptist : " This is he of whom it is written, 
Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, 
which shall prepare thy way before thee." How 
different and guarded are his words when asserting 
that the same John was Elias ! " If ye will receive 
it, this is Elias which was for to come ; he that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear." This difference of 
manner plainly shows that John was not so clearly 
and literally Elias, as he was the messenger there 
spoken of; and suggests to us the idea that Christ 
in the latter instance was using the figurative 
language of prophecy, which constantly applies to 
the type the name and qualities of the antitype. 
It certainly cannot be thought more strange to 



ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 95 

find the Lord referring to John the Baptist under 
the title of Elijah, than to see his servant Peter 
(Acts ii. 20.) applying to the destruction of Jeru- 
salem the accompanying expression, " the great 
and terrible day of the Lord." " Behold, I will 
send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of 
the great and terrible day of the Lord." 

The great error of the interpretative theology 
among the Jews arose from allowing their judg- 
ment to be biassed by their passions. They 
would not hear of a suffering Messiah ; and ap- 
plied to the first coming of the Son of Man the 
prophecies which belonged to the second, when 
the sons of Jacob were to have dominion over the 
Gentiles, and Jerusalem was to become the me- 
tropolis of the world. This radical error led them 
into a corresponding mistake concerning the fore- 
runner that was to appear in their times ; and 
consistently enough with their ideas, they were 
expecting the return of Elijah the Tishbite, to 
prepare the way for the Lord of glory. The 
Apostles, too, had fallen into the common error of 
the day in supposing that Christ was then going 
to assume his great power and glory to restore the 
kingdom to Israel ; and were confirmed in that 
belief by the appearance of Elias at the trans- 
figuration. They could not, therefore, understand 
our Saviour's declaration that the Son of Man 
should rise from the dead ; but questioned one with 



96 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

another what the rising from the dead, as it re- 
ferred to the Son of Man, should mean. To 
gain farther information, they proposed their 
doubts under the name of the authorized teach- 
ers of the nation, and asked him, " Why say 
the Scribes that Elias must first come ?" In reply, 
our Saviour did not tell them that they had been 
misled by their teachers, or that the opinion itself 
was unreasonable ; on the contrary, he seemed 
rather to acknowledge the justness of that expecta- 
tion, by saying, " Elias truly shall first come," 
before the thorough establishment of Messiah's 
kingdom ; although he set them right as to their 
immediate expectations, by telling them that the 
Elijah, adapted to the opening of the Gospel 
scheme, was already come : " I say unto you, that 
Elias is come already." The general propriety of 
the mode of interpretation here offered, will be 
more clearly seen by comparing this passage with 
another, in which two distinct advents of the Son 
of Man are mentioned together. 

Matt. xvi. 27. The Son of Matt. xvii. 11. Jesus an- 

Man shall come in the glory of swered and said unto them, 

his Father with his angels ; and Elias truly shall first come and 

then he shall reward every man restore all things, 
according to his works. 

28. Verily I say unto you, 12. But I say unto you, 

There be some standing here Elias is come already, and 

which shall not taste of death they knew him not, but have 



ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 97 

till they see the Son of Man done unto him whatsoever they 
coming in his kingdom. listed. 

The subject will receive farther illustration by 
a similar comparison of the Evangelist with the 
Prophet. 

Matt. xvii. 11. Jesus an- Mai. iv. 5. Behold I will 

swered and said unto them, send you Elijah the prophet 

Elias truly shall first come before the coming of the great 

and restore all things. and terrible day of the Lord. 

12. But I say unto you, iii. 1. Behold I will send 

Elias is come already, and my messenger, and he shall 

they knew him not, but have prepare the way before me, and 

done unto him whatsoever the Lord whom ye seek shall 

they listed. suddenly come to his temple. 



According to St. Mark i. 1. " The beginning of 
the gospel of Jesus Christ," took place in the 
fulfilment of the two prophecies concerning the 
" voice" and the "messenger;" the prediction 
concerning Elias respects not the beginning, but 
the perfect establishment of Messiah's kingdom, 
which was an event remotely distant in the Evan- 
gelist's days, and to ourselves is still future. 

I shall now endeavour to illustrate a passage of 
St. Mark ix. 12., which at present labours under 
some confusion, both with respect to grammatical 
accuracy and historical truth : — (b) 



And he said unto them : 

Elias shall first come and restore all things, 
H 



98 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

As it is written [of the Son of Man,] 
That he may suffer many things and be set at nought; 
But I say unto you : 
That indeed Elias is come, 
And they did to him what they listed, 
As it is written [of him.]" 

By transposing the clauses between the brackets, 
we should bring the passage to such close agree- 
ment with the Old Testament account, that I 
cannot help suspecting some inaccuracy of tran- 
scribers here. Thus : " Elias shall first come and 
restore all things, as it is written of him." Now 
it is expressly written of Elias, that he shall first 
come and restore all things ; and it is not written 
of the Baptist, but of the Son of Man, that the 
Jews should do to him what they listed. Besides 
the clearness and consistency arising from this 
amendment, the arrangement is brought to a 
nearer coincidence with St. Matthew, who places 
the reference to the Son of Man last : 

" But I say unto you : 

Elias is already come, and they knew him not, 
But they have done to him what they listed ; 
Thus also shall the Son of Man suffer of them." 

But, even as the words now lie, they must neces- 
sarily refer to some future suffering of a distinct 
Elias, for John the Baptist was already dead. 
Therefore, as Malachi had informed us that 



ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 99 

Elijah the prophet was to come before a particular 
period for a particular purpose ; so, in addition 
to this, we seem to learn from our Saviour, that 
Elijah, at his coming, will meet with persecution 
in the fulfilment of his appointed office. 

There is an ancient tradition handed down by 
the Fathers, which was very generally held by 
divines before the Reformation, and is still main- 
tained by Romanists ; namely, that Enoch and 
Elias are yet to come, and by their martyrdom 
extinguish Antichrist (c). Protestant commenta- 
tors pass it over in silence, or reject it with con- 
tempt ; but surely its general prevalence among 
the early Christians should command respect ; 
and it is not impossible but that it may have been 
derived from the same source, and preserved by 
the same means as the prophecy of Enoch, which 
has been authenticated by St. Jude. But this 
part of my subject is so clearly treated by an 
anonymous author, that I gladly avail myself of 
his statement. 

" If no part of Israel was in a state to receive 
the preaching of the kingdom which is to come, 
until restored to unity and integrity of doctrine 
by the preparatory mission of John the Baptist, 
how is the world now fitted to receive, without 
some such preparation, the actual establishment 
of that kingdom ? Christendom is divided into 
innumerable sects, some holding the vainest and 

ii 2 



100 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

most heathenish traditions of a dark age, and 
others asserting the mere humanity of the Lord, 
while the higher ranks of society and the men of 
letters are, to a vast extent, estranged from every 
form and modification of religious belief. Mysti- 
cism, in one great nation of Europe, almost 
threatens us with a revival of Paganism, i. e. of 
the worship of the world, the elements, the sun, 
and the host of heaven. Paganism, in its undis- 
guised state, divides Asia and Africa with the 
monstrous heresy of the Saracens. And in Jewry, 
the palpable darkness of the Talmudists has suc- 
ceeded to the false lights of the Scribes and 
Rabbins, while their fond superstitious hopes 
openly invite the greatest and most blasphemous 
of all impostures that can be practised. Where- 
fore, it seems very needful that some person in 
the spirit and power of John, should prepare and 
make ready for the Lord, the three general divi- 
sions of those who acknowledge the God of Abra- 
ham, viz. the Christians, Mahometans, and Jews, 
and their manifold subdivisions, before his coming 
in power at his great day and acceptable year ; 
and also, that some such person should, with like 
authority, call back the mere Gentiles from their 
more ancient error of worshipping the creature 
instead of the Creator, and from the atheism of 
the heathen mysteries to the faith of the Patri- 
archs. Two eminent saints and prophets, the 



ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 101 

one belonging to the Patriarchs of old, and the 
other to the Israelites, have to this day been kept 
in store by God, and these remarks may point 
our views to the great ends for which they have 
been preserved as a living testimony. Whatever 
they may yet have to perform, there can be no 
doubt as to that which they have to undergo ; 

Semotique prius tarda necessitas 
Lethi corripiet gradum. 

This is a most assured truth, that the grave hath 
never said, it is enough, and that in Adam all die. 
The Book of Revelations (xi. 3 — 12.) contains 
this prediction : ' I will give power unto my two 
witnesses,' &c. 

"That passage has been subjected by some 
Protestants to allegorical interpretations, which 
are perfectly incomprehensible. But the Fathers 
and the Divines anterior to the Reformation, 
with a general consent, used to see in this pas- 
sage an account of the mission, and testimony, 
and death, and resurrection, of Enoch and Elias. 
The Anglo-Saxon author on ' The Times of 
Antichrist,' actually quotes the words ' when 
they shall have finished their testimony' in this 
manner : ' Loca ! hwonne thara Godes thegna 
Enoch and Elias tima curaen bith, that heora 
bodung ge-endod bith;' a mode of quoting which 
nothing can justify, but which shows how entirely 
that construction of the passage was taken for 



102 ENOCH, ELIAS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

granted. To me it certainly appears a very plain 
and legitimate one, and the only one that has 
been offered with the slightest respect to reason or 
probability. 

" Upon the whole, I think, that ere Christ 
come to give laws to the perfect kingdom, Enoch 
and Elias must first come, in much power, to 
restore all things; and that as Christ came before 
with a limited display of power, and none of 
glory, to lay the immoveable foundation of his 
Church and kingdom, so John then went before 
him in humble guise, but so far in the spirit and 
power of Elias, that he had knowledge and au- 
thority to restore the lost truth in Israel ; — in the 
spirit of Elias, and not of Enoch, because his 
mission was only to the sons of Jacob, and not to 
those of Adam. The world must look for the 
coming of the Patriarchs who are in Paradise ; 
but not with impatience, and vain calculations of 
that which cannot be solved beforehand, however 
clearly it may be recognized afterwards, but is a 
volume sealed until the time of the end." (British 
Magazine, vol. I. p. 345.) 



ESSAY X. 

THE FALLEN ANGELS AND THE SPIRITS IN 
PRISON. 

Hades, or as it is translated in our Bible, Hell, 
is the general receptacle of departed souls. Ac- 
cording to the popular opinion of the Jews, it 
was divided into two distinct parts : the abode 
of the righteous after death, they called Para- 
dise, or Abraham's bosom ; the place where the 
wicked are shut up, they named Tartarus, or the 
bottomless pit. To one of these two compart- 
ments of Hades it was supposed that every hu- 
man soul is consigned during the interval between 
death and judgment; at which awful day they 
are removed, according to their sentence, either 
to the heaven of the New Jerusalem where is the 
tree of life, or to Gehenna which is the true Hell 
and the second death," (Rev. xx. 14.) 

But Tartarus, which is the prison of Hades, 
was not tenantless before the death of the first 
wicked men. Scripture informs us that sinful 
spirits of a higher order were already there, de- 
tained in darkness and reserved for judgment. 
" God spared not the angels that sinned, but with 



104 THE FALLEN ANGELS 

chains of darkness confining them in Tartarus, 
delivered them over to be kept for judgment," 
(2 Pet.ii. 4, Macknight.) "The angels which 
kept not their first estate, but left their own habi- 
tation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains 
under darkness unto the judgment of the great 
day," Jude 6. From this it follows, that the an- 
gels who fell are not, at present, suffering the 
punishment due to their sin ; but, like malefac- 
tors, they are kept in durance till the time come 
when they are to be punished with the wicked of 
our own race. 

For reasons beyond our understanding, some of 
these unclean spirits have been allowed to roam 
the earth ; and their chief captain, our great 
" adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh 
about, seeking whom he may devour." (1 Pet. 
v. 8.) This was conspicuously the case in the 
time of our Saviour, whose great power and au- 
thority were shown in rebuking them. In that 
remarkable instance, where a man was possessed 
with a legion of demons, " they besought Jesus 
that he would not command them to go out into 
the bottomless pit." (Luke viii. 31.) St. Matthew 
informs us that they felt their own hopeless 
destiny, and acknowledged the superior power of 
Jesus, by crying out, " What have we to do with 
thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? Art thou come 
hither to torment us before the time'?" (viii. 29.) 



AND THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 105 

The bottomless pit is also mentioned as the place 
of confinement for Satan himself: — " I saw an 
angel come down from heaven, having the key 
of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his 
hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old 
serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and 
bound him a thousand years, and cast him into 
the bottomless pit, and set a seal upon him." 
(Rev. xx. 1.) 

The few passages of the New Testament, that 
speak of the angels which sinned, are by no means 
so worded as if to convey a direct revelation con- 
cerning them ; but they are introduced by way 
of illustration, which shows that a knowledge of 
the fact was common in the days of the Apostles. 
The information was derived by tradition from 
times of the most remote antiquity, and we meet 
with undoubted allusions to it in that very ancient 
composition, the Book of Job ; — " Behold, he 
putteth no trust in his servants ; and his angels 
he chargeth with folly." (iv. 18.) " Behold, he 
putteth no trust in his saints ; yea, the heavens 
are not clean in his sight." (xv. 15.) There seems 
to be sufficient reason (says Bishop Blomfield) for 
supposing that several facts, relating both to the 
original formation of man himself, and of the 
universe in which he was placed, and to the reli- 
gious habits and opinions of mankind before the 
flood, were current amongst the descendants of 



106 THE FALLEN ANGELS 

Abraham, having been derived, through the 
medium of Noah, from the faithful posterity of 
Seth ; which particulars, nevertheless, Moses 
might not have been prompted to insert in his 
brief and compendious narrative . . . There were, 
undoubtedly, some traditions, relative to the ope- 
rations and counsels of the Deity, which survived, 
although not in the Mosaic records, even to the 
age of the Apostles. In the fourth and fifteenth 
chapters of the Book of Job, there are plain allu- 
sions to the antediluvian notion of the fallen 
angels, which is stated in more express terms by 
two of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. Jude. 
That this tradition was of very ancient date, we 
might conclude from the place which it occupies 
in Pagan mythology (a) ; that it is true, we infer 
from the use which the Apostles have made of it. 
Yet it is not recorded, nor even alluded to, in the 
only history which gives an authentic account of 
the creation ; and therefore we suppose it to have 
been derived from Adam, and at a later period 
from Noah ; by some of whose descendants it was 
corrupted and disfigured ; while by the family of 
Shem it was preserved, either memorially or in 
writing, down to the time of the Apostles. (Tra- 
dition of the Promise, p. 22.) 

This representation of the matter may induce 
us to believe that Adam had clearer notions of his 
malignant enemy than the mere words of the 

7 



AND THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 107 

narrative would lead us to suppose ; and that he 
had some insight into the spiritual meaning of the 
promise in the curse upon the serpent. Of the 
actual enmity between the holy seed and the seed 
of the serpent, he soon had woeful and practical 
experience in the murder of Abel ; but, no doubt, 
he was also aware of the continuing aggressions 
of that powerful evil spirit, w r hich had originally 
wrought his ruin. The terms of the sentence 
show that the enmity was to be hereditary and 
mortal, and the attacks incessant ; in short, that 
the great adversary would be ever on the alert, 
u asa roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom 
he may devour." In very early times we find the 
fact of Satan's roaming the earth expressly stated : 
" Now there was a day when the sons of God 
came to present themselves before the Lord, and 
Satan came also among them. And the Lord 
said unto Satan, Whence comest thou ? Then 
Satan answered the Lord and said, From going 
to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and 
down in it." (Job i. 6 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 1.) What- 
ever may be the date of the Book of Job, the 
existence of Satan and his malicious efforts against 
mankind were well known at that period ; and 
the knowledge of it seems to have been derived 
by tradition from still more ancient times. In- 
deed, it appears an extremely reasonable suppo- 
sition that Jehovah, during his frequent inter- 



108 THE FALLEN ANGELS 

course with Adam in Paradise, should reveal to 
him so important an event as the apostasy and 
punishment of the fallen angels ; especially as 
such knowledge would serve as a warning " lest 
being lifted up with pride he should fall into the 
condemnation of the devil" (1 Tim. iii. 6.) ; and 
I suppose that it was in consequence of Satan's 
acting through a creature inferior to herself, that 
put Eve off her guard against the rebel angel, 
and betrayed her to her ruin. 

I proceed now with the case of the departed 
spirits of wicked men. St. Peter having informed 
us that "God delivered the angels that sinned 
into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judg- 
ment," 2nd Epist. ii. 4. adds in the 9th verse : 
"The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust 
unto the day of judgment to be punished." An 
instance of this reserving unto judgment we have 
in the account of the different condition of the rich 
man and Lazarus after death. Luke xvi. 19. They 
were both in Hades ; but the rich man was in 
torments in a place securely separated from the 
abode of Lazarus, who was in Abraham's bosom. 
It is not expressly declared that Dives was in 
confinement, or bound in chains like the fallen 
angels ; but the whole narrative proceeds on that 
supposition. If at liberty, he would certainly 
have escaped bodily from the flame which tor- 
mented him, and not have been satisfied with the 



AND THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 109 

mere cooling of his tongue ; but he was encircled 
with a great gulf, and was in as close confine- 
ment as the three holy Jews in Nebuchadnezzar's 
furnace. Farther, he seems to have been fully 
conscious that even a short release from his con- 
finement was impossible ; else he would not have 
prayed father Abraham to send Lazarus to testify 
unto his five brethren : such a commission en- 
trusted to himself would have afforded a temporary 
relief from the tormenting flame, and might be 
expected to produce in his brethren a more sure 
and speedy repentance than the arguments of an 
alien could effect (6). 

There is another passage in Scripture, relating 
immediately to the antediluvian period, in which 
departed spirits are represented as being reserved 
in the prison of Hades unto the day of judgment. 
" Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for 
the unjust, that he. might bring us to God, being- 
put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
Spirit ; by which also he went and preached unto 
the spirits in prison, which sometime were dis- 
obedient, when once the long-suffering of God 
waited in the days of Noah." (1 Pet. iii. 18.) If 
any spirits of men are confined in the darkness of 
the bottomless pit, and reserved there unto the 
judgment of the great day, it may with safety be 
declared of those that brought on the flood, and 
were so desperately wicked as to cause the Al- 



1 10 THE FALLEN ANGELS 

mighty to repent that he had made man. There 
can then be no doubt as to the persons here 
alluded to ; they are those noted unbelievers that 
filled the earth with violence in the days of Noah, 
but who now are spirits confined in the prison of 
Hades against the judgment of the great day. In 
a previous passage of this Epistle, St. Peter had 
prepared us for understanding the expression : 
" By the Spirit, Christ went and preached to the 
spirits in prison." In the 1st chapter and 10th 
verse, he speaks of the prophets as "searching 
what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ 
which was in them did signify, when it testified 
before hand," &c. It was therefore the Spirit of 
Christ in Enoch, which testified of his coming 
in judgment at the flood : " Behold, the Lord 
cometh," &c. It was the Spirit of Christ in 
Noah, which testified beforehand : " My Spirit 
shall not always strive with man," &c. Thus 
Christ, by the Spirit, went (c) and preached to 
the generation of vipers which rejected him in the 
days of Noah, and who now are shut up under 
darkness unto the judgment of the great day ; as 
afterwards, in the body, he went and preached to 
that generation of vipers which crucified him in 
these latter days. 

By the Spirit, as afterwards in the body, we 
may suppose him to have thus preached to the 
lawless infidels before the flood: " Ye serpents, 



AND THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. Ill 

ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the 
damnation of hell ! Behold, I send unto you 
prophets and wise men and scribes ; and some of 
them ye shall kill and crucify ; and some of them 
ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and perse- 
cute them from city to city : that upon you may 
come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, 
from the blood of righteous Abel unto [the end of 
the age.] Verily I say unto you, All these things 
shall come upon this generation." Matt, xxiii. 
33. (d). 

The belief of the separate existence of the soul 
is proved by the abuse of that opinion in the pre- 
tended arts of witchcraft and necromancy, which 
prevailed in the earliest ages. The story of the 
Witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii. 7.) clearly shows 
that this doctrine was an article of popular belief, 
and that it was thought possible by certain secret 
arts, to maintain an intercourse with departed 
spirits. From some expressions of Isaiah it would 
appear that ventriloquism was the means by 
which the deception was carried on (e). 

" They seek unto the necromancers, and the wizards, 
To them that speak inwardly, and that mutter ; 
Should not a people seek unto their God ? 
Should they seek, instead of the living, unto the dead ?" 

viii. 19. 
" Thou shalt be brought low ; thou shalt speak as from be- 
neath the earth ; 
And from out of the dust thou shalt utter a feeble speech ; 



112 THE FALLEN ANGELS 

And thy voice shall come out of the ground like that of a 

necromancer : 
And thy words from out of the dust shall give a small shrill 

sound." — xxix. 4. 

The art of necromancy must have been in full 
practice at the time of Moses, for he has made 
enactments against it: — "There shall not be 
found among you ... a charmer, or a consulter 
with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necro- 
mancer." (Heb. One that seeketh unto the dead. 
Deut. xviii. 10.) This pretension to an inter- 
course with the dead must necessarily have been 
founded on the belief of the separate existence of 
the soul ; and therefore that doctrine must have 
obtained before God's new revelation in the Law, 
and consequently have existed under the Patri- 
archal dispensation. 

Our Saviour's argument with the Sadducees, 
taken from Exod. iii. 6. in evidence of a resurrec- 
tion, proves, a fortiori, the separate existence of 
the soul. 

" And Jesus answering said unto them : 
" Do ye not hence err, 
Because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God ? 

For when they shall have risen from the dead, 
They neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
But are as the angels which are in heaven. 

And as touching the dead that they are raised, 



AND THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 113 

Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the 

bush God spake unto him, 
Saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 

Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? 

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living ; 
Ye therefore do greatly err." 

St. Paul has drawn out this argument more 
clearly, (Heb. xi. 16.) " These patriarchs died 
in faith, desiring a better country, that is, an 
heavenly ; wherefore God is not ashamed to be 
called their God, for he hath prepared for them a 
city. They are come unto mount Sion, and unto 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
to an innumerable company of angels, and to the 
general assembly and church of the first-born." 
(xii. 22.) But the same reasoning applies equally 
to the case of Isaac, as it did to Moses ; for to 
Isaac also " The Lord appeared, and said unto 
him, I am the God of Abraham, thy father." 
(Gen. xxvi. 24.) Now Abraham was already 
dead ; therefore Isaac might have inferred, that 
Abraham's soul was not annihilated ; a fact which 
he, no doubt, knew well enough before. 

The belief of the soul's existence after death is 
so very ancient, that we cannot refer its origin to 
any time subsequently to that of Adam. Of 
Abel, Enoch, Noah, St. Paul hath said, " These 
all died in faith, not having received the promises ; 

i 



114 THE FALLEN ANGELS, &C. 

but, having seen them afar off, were persuaded of 
them and embraced them, and confessed that 
they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth ; 
now they that say such things declare plainly that 
they seek a country." (Heb. xi. 13.) So that it 
is probable, at least, that the infidels who heard 
and scoffed at the denunciation " Behold, the 
Lord cometh to execute judgment on the ungod- 
ly," might also know and mock at the prison of 
Hades, in which were said to be confined the 
rebellious angels and the wicked of their own 
race. 



ESSAY XL 

THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

The Church of God, as at present constituted, 
was founded in Paradise. It has since received 
great accessions of spiritual knowledge, and un- 
dergone some alterations in its religious ordi- 
nances ; but, as established immediately after the 
Fall, and before man's expulsion from the Garden 
of the Lord, it contained all the fundamental 
articles which are common and necessary to the 
Universal Church of all ages down from Adam to 
the present time. 

I shall now state what are these fundamental 
articles of belief, and consider them in the follow- 
ing order : 

(1.) The acknowledgment of God as the Creator 
and Moral Governor of the world. 

(2.) The life and judgment to come. 

(3.) Forgiveness of sins upon repentance by 
means of a Saviour. 

(4.) The assurance of God's Spirit to help our 
infirmities and assist our sincere endeavours after 
holiness. 

i 2 



116 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 



(1.) Adam certainly knew that the Lord, with 
whom he conversed in the Garden, was the 
Creator of all the wonders he saw around him. 
In the case of Eve, we are expressly told that he 
was acquainted with the mode of her formation ; 
for " Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, 
and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called Woman, 
because she was taken out of Man." But that 
lasting memorial of the order and process of 
creation, the institution of a Sabbath, " because 
that in it God rested from all his work which he 
had created and made," precludes all farther 
question on the subject. 

Adam also well knew that obedience and wor- 
ship were due unto that good, and wise, and 
powerful Being who had created him. The very 
conditions of his existence imply this allegiance : 
" In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt 
surely die." Here God plainly declares that he 
has respect unto the good and evil actions of his 
creatures ; and Adam manifested an involuntary 
consciousness of this attribute, when, after the 
transgression, he would have hidden himself from 
the presence of his Governor and Judge. The 
Almighty displayed this attribute, when he had 
respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto 
Cain and to his offering he had not respect. 
Cain confessed it, when he declared, My punish- 
ment is greater than I can bear. And Enoch 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 11.7 

brought it fearfully to mind, when he proclaimed, 
" Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of 
his saints to execute judgment on the ungodly." 

The present direction of an overruling Provi- 
dence is assured to man through prophecy, which 
shows that events are under the controul of a 
powerful and gracious Being. Now, from the 
first, there existed the prophecy that the seed of 
the woman should bruise the serpent's head ; and 
this w^as practically represented by sacrifice. 
Hence, the ordinance of sacrifice and the observ- 
ance of a sabbath, in the Antediluvian Church, 
was a continual practical acknowledgment of 
God as the Creator and Moral Governor of the 
world. 

(2.) Man, by his original constitution, was 
made capable of immortality. This is plainly 
implied in the very tenure by which he held his 
existence : " In the day that thou eatest thereof, 
thou shalt surely die." The death, threatened 
upon disobedience, might have been total anni- 
hilation ; but we find, from the terms of the sen- 
tence passed on him by God, that it was limited 
to the dissolution of the body : "In the sweat of 
thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return 
unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken ; 
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re- 
turn." The return of this material body to its 
kindred dust is the whole extent of the punish- 



118 THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

ment here denounced ; the annihilation of that 
breath of life, the destruction of that reasonable 
soul, with which God had quickened this bodily 
frame, is not so much as hinted, Adam, there- 
fore, would quickly perceive that he was in the 
hands of a merciful Judge ; and that eternal death 
was not to be his doom. He saw that even the 
present life was, for a space, to be continued to 
him ; and he was supported against despair by 
the consoling prospect, that one should arise from 
his posterity who was to defeat the malicious plot 
of the serpent, and eventually restore his race to 
their original purity and bliss. 

The circumstances that accompanied death 
upon its first entrance into our world, afforded to 
the faithful a lively evidence of another and better 
life. The righteous Abel, openly accepted of 
God in the solemnities of public worship, yet cut 
off in the spring time of life ; the murderer Cain, 
rejected of God, yet permitted to live, and blessed 
with a flourishing offspring ! The voice of Abel's 
blood yet crieth from the ground : he, though 
dead, yet speaketh of the life and judgment to 
come. 

From the first, I might have asserted that the 
promise of restoration to a being who had just 
forfeited an immortal life in the body, could not 
but imply an assurance of eternal life in that 
body, in which, under other circumstances, he 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 119 

would have continued to enjoy it ; but the trans- 
lation of Enoch, presented as a fact to the bodily 
eye, what the mind had hitherto admitted only 
as matter of belief : namely, that in our Father's 
house are many mansions, into which he will 
receive the righteous, both body and soul, after 
death. 

The belief of a life to come, under the govern- 
ment of an Almighty Being, who now takes 
cognizance of the good and evil actions of his 
creatures, necessarily implies that future life to 
be a state of retribution, in which every man will 
be rewarded according to the deeds done in the 
body ; but the prophecy of Enoch would lead us 
to suppose that the Antediluvians had some idea 
of a personal coming of the Lord in judgment. 
His prophecy received a primary fulfilment at the 
awful catastrophe of the flood ; yet that was only 
a token and earnest of the great and terrible day, 
" in the which God will judge the world in right- 
eousness by that man whom he hath ordained." 

(3.) Forgiveness of sins has no necessary con- 
nexion with repentance ; it is rather contrary to 
that analogy, which experience presents to us. 
Do we not daily observe that an unguarded or 
wilful departure from the path of duty is followed 
by disease, poverty, or disgrace, which no contri- 
tion can remove or lessen ? If it is otherwise in 
spiritual concerns, it is only God's free mercy 



120 THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

that makes it so ; it is his word that assures it to 
us. The revelation of forgiveness on repentance 
must have been made as the very first step to- 
wards instituting a Church ; for the purpose of a 
Church is to keep up a communication between 
the creature and the Creator ; and forgiveness of 
sins on repentance, is the only common tie that 
can exist between sinful man and a holy God. 

When Adam first heard the voice of his Maker 
after the transgression, he endeavoured, in the 
fruitless agony of remorse, to hide himself amongst 
the trees of the Garden ; and upon being ques- 
tioned, he answered with the hard-hearted reck- 
lessness of despair : ''The woman, whom thou 
gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, 
and I did eat." How different was his conduct 
upon the declaration of this all-important doctrine, 
which is included in the promise of a Redeemer ; 
repentance led him to faith ; which he imme- 
diately exhibited by changing his wife's name to 
Eve (life), because she was the mother of all 
living by means of the promised seed. Adam 
was clearly in a state of penitence upon his ad- 
mission into the covenant of grace ; but, if for- 
giveness and repentance had not previously been 
connected in the Divine counsels, his repentance 
would have availed nothing ; on the other hand, 
there could have been no such transaction as the 
covenant of grace by a Redeemer, if Adam had 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 121 

remained in the same impenitent state as Cain 
did afterwards. 

The atonement of Christ is the efficient cause 
that connects repentance with forgiveness ; but as 
this their mutual dependence arises solely from 
the good pleasure of God, the real efficacy is 
quite independent of man's accurate knowledge 
of the cause itself. The doctrine, therefore, may 
be clearly revealed and become available to man, 
whilst the reason of God's forgiveness remains 
more or less obscure. Since the Apostle says, 
" By faith Abel offered," &c. it is evident that 
Adam and Abel had that knowledge of a Re- 
deemer to come, which sufficed to draw forth a 
due exhibition of Christian faith to the saving of 
their soul ; but it is equally clear that they had 
not a perfect conception of the heart-stirring par- 
ticulars (a) because their complete development 
was reserved for the Gospel of Christ, which con- 
tains the revelation of the mystery which was 
kept secret since the world began. (Rom. xvi. 
25.) 

(4.) The assistance of God's Spirit to help our 
infirmities is implied in the very institution of a 
Church. After freely bestowing such great mer- 
cies, the Almighty would surely view with favour 
his creature's feeble, but sincere efforts after obe- 
dience and holiness ; he would not allow all this 
glorious scheme of redemption to prove abortive 



122 THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

from want of farther assistance. A consideration 
of the circumstances would lead us to this infe- 
rence ; but an open representation of the Spirit's 
calling a sinner to repentance is afforded us in an 
early period of the world's history ; and we wit- 
ness the fearful effects of resisting it in the case of 
Cain, who was the first reprobate. Upon the 
manifestation of his worldly and infidel spirit in 
the matter of his offering, the Almighty pleaded 
strongly with him to bring him to repentance ; 
but Cain hardened his heart against the Lord, 
and would none of his reproof; therefore, as he 
would not retain God in his knowledge, God 
gave him over to a reprobate mind, the first 
workings of which was the murder of a brother 
in cold blood. The serpent that had deluded 
his father to disobey the commandment of God, 
instigated Cain to the murder of Abel ; and after- 
wards " Satan filled his heart to lie to the Holy 
Ghost" in denying all knowledge of his brother : 
" I know not ; am I my brother's keeper?" 

The Spirit continued its holy work of confirm- 
ing the faithful, and calling the sinner to repent- 
ance. When the Lord failed to draw men to him 
by the persuasive accents of love, he spoke in the 
louder tone of threatening and punishment, and 
Enoch did prophesy of coming judgment. Yet, 
for all this, they sinned more and more. Even 
then, Noah, " a preacher of righteousness," was 
7 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 123 

raised up to reclaim them, and threaten them, 
unless they repented, with a flood of waters to 
destroy all flesh. But they repented not : they 
hardened their heart, and resisted the Holy 
Ghost. What more, then, could be done for his 
apostate Church, which the Lord had not done ? 
The time of acceptance passed away, and they 
were still in their sins. Therefore God said, 
" My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for 
that he also is flesh ;" he is altogether carnally- 
minded. They were given over to a reprobate 
mind, and forfeited both " the promise of the life 
that now is, and of that which is to come." 

In times past, as well as in these latter days, 
the Spirit more especially addressed itself to the 
soul of man in the use of appointed ordinances; 
and the Antediluvian Church had its spiritual 
strength continually refreshed by the observance 
of the Sabbath, the rite of Sacrifice, and medita- 
tion on God's Word. The distinction, also, of 
clean and unclean animals relative to sacrifice, 
(Gen. viii. 20.) was enforced upon them in order 
to inculcate inward purity ; and this analogy 
between the ceremonial law of the primeval 
Church, and the ritual of the chosen people, is 
farther carried on in the appointment of a parti- 
cular place to bring the sacrifice as an offering to 
the Lord. It is not said that Abel made an offer- 
ing from the firstlings of his flock, but that he 



124 THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

brought it. Now, as we are acquainted with the 
sacred tabernacle and cherubim in front of the 
Garden of Eden, and with the religious uses of 
the tabernacle and cherubim under the Jewish 
dispensation, we cannot doubt that Abel brought 
his sacrifice to this holy place, which had been 
chosen by the Lord out of all the earth to put his 
name there, and was consecrated by the manifest- 
ation of the Divine presence. 

Under the original dispensation, as under the 
other two, it is probable that man's faith was 
systematically quickened by an occasional exhibi- 
tion of miracles. The respect, which the Lord 
had unto Abel's offering above that of Cain, was 
visibly manifested, and perhaps by miraculous 
fire. When the Lord showed a sign unto Cain, 
in token that no man should kill him, it is 
thought that he worked some miracle to convince 
him. (b) But we have one instance of an un- 
doubted miracle in the translation of Enoch ; 
and analogy would lead us to suppose that he 
was empowered to work miracles to establish his 
claim to a divine commission and authenticate 
his prophetic communications to the Church. His 
only compeer, Elijah, did close a very wonderful 
sojourn upon earth by supernaturally ascending 
from it in the body ; and is it not probable that 
Enoch also, who, against nature, hath not yet 
returned unto his dust, did, whilst upon earth, 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 125 

work marvels in his Israel, and hold nature and 
her elements under his controul. 

After such an exposition of the doctrines of 
the primeval Church, it is altogether needless to 
investigate its moral law ; but it may be interest- 
ing to observe that the great threefold division of 
duties, namely, toward God, our neighbour, and 
ourself, seems to have been not unknown in those 
early times, as may be inferred from the memorial 
of Noah : 

" This is the record of Noah ; 
Noah was a just man, 
Perfect was he in his ways ; 
With God walked Noah." 

The observance of a Sabbath, and the institu- 
tion of marriage between one man and one wo- 
man, sufficiently indicate the state of society at 
that period. These ordinances w T ould long pre- 
sent a firm barrier against the encroachments of 
worldly-mindedness and licentiousness ; and to 
their subversion the spirit of Antichrist would 
then, as it has since done, strenuously exert its 
baleful energies. To some it would suggest that 
they rested merely on human authority; to others, 
that they were the device of priestcraft in order 
to keep men in bondage ; until in the end it was 
agreed that however well adapted they might be 
to the ignorance of primitive times,, they were 



126 THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 

totally unsuited to the liberal principles and ge- 
neral enlightenment of the latter days. Thus, 
through the teaching of the serpent, the eyes of 
a wicked generation were opened, but alas ! as in 
a former case, to the experience of evil ; they 
brought upon themselves a judgment from God 
in the present life, and are now spirits in prison 
reserved under darkness against the judgment of 
the great day. 

This original device the serpent is again to 
practise, and shall prosper, in the latter days of 
the present age ; but woe unto those who, walk- 
ing amidst the brightness of heavenly wisdom, 
shall wilfully shut their eyes to the truth and 
have them opened at the tree of knowledge. — 
"Assuredly, if ever, if anyhow, if anywhere, 
man was without excuse for spiritual ignorance, 
it is in these latter days, under this prodigality 
of revelation, and in this Church of Christ. Let 
us not, therefore, O brethren and partners in the 
revelation of Christ Jesus, neglect so great salva- 
tion. In refusing it, think ye that we shall have 
refused once only, which is a sin sufficiently great, 
or twice only, which is a sin more fearful still ? 
O no ! we shall have refused thrice, and what 
shall save us then, what further means shall re- 
new us to repentance then ? For thrice hath 
God, by his merciful intervention with fallen 
man, delivered his revelation upon earth. Once 



THE PRIMEVAL CHURCH. 127 

in Paradise, again from Mount Sinai, and lastly 
from Mount Calvary. Happy the forgetful 
Heathen, happy the rejecting Jew, compared 
with the heedless Christian. With fear and 
trembling, then, at our responsibility ; with joy 
and gratitude for the gift ; with faith and hope 
in his promises, let us accept in heart and mind 
his blessed word ; reckoning the knowledge of 
this the only wisdom, — the practice of its doc- 
trines the only virtue, — the delight of acquiring 
the graces thence derived the only joy, — the calm 
and serenity which it inspires the only peace,— 
the affections which it moulds and creates the 
only love, —the reward which it offers the only 
prize, — the way which it points out the only road 
to everlasting life. So help us, Almighty God, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Evans' Sermons 
on the Church of God,) 



ESSAY XII. 

THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

Miracles and prophecy are the usual means by 
which God has condescended to authenticate his 
communications with man. By miracles he af- 
forded an immediate and visible assurance of some 
future event declared by prophecy. Among the 
chosen people, the dealings of Providence were 
laid more plainly open to observation ; and the 
appointed instruments of the Almighty, for bring- 
ing about his ordained course of events, had their 
own faith strengthened, and their credit with 
others established, by some manifest sign from 
the finger of God. This was a wise and merciful 
adaptation to the feelings of human nature ; in- 
deed, it is impossible for us to conceive any other 
way that would so effectually obviate distrust on 
the one hand, and incredulity on the other. 

After the four hundred years of affliction, at the 
time prefixed, (Gen. xv. 13.) when the children 
of Israel were to be brought up out of Egypt, and 
that unpromising charge was laid upon Moses, 
how natural was the expression of his feelings ! 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 129 

" But, behold, they will not believe me, for they 
will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.'' 
(Exod. iv. 1.) Upon which he was immediately 
furnished with the miraculous signs of the serpent- 
rod and the leprous hand, in token to himself and 
the Israelites of their approaching deliverance. 
Similar feelings and similar condescension were 
exhibited in the case of Gideon when commis- 
sioned to save Israel from the hands of the Midian- 
ites : " Wherewith shall I save Israel? . . . If now 
I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a 
sign that thou talkest with me." (Judg. vi. 15.) 
Then the angel of the Lord put forth his staff and 
touched the flesh, and there rose up fire out of 
the rock and consumed it. And when, for wise 
purposes, God determined to raise up Hezekiah, 
and add fifteen years to his life, that king said 
unto Isaiah, "What shall be the sign that the 
Lord will heal me ?" (2 Kings xx. 8.) And Isaiah 
said, This sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that 
the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken ; 
and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward 
by which it had gone down on the dial. 

Such instances are numberless in the Bible, 
and the point to be attended to is that the sign 
was always something new or miraculous. This 
method of giving a present sign, as an authen- 
ticating token of a future benefit, was observed by 
God from the earliest times. It was so done in 



130 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

the person of Cain ; the Lord showed a sign unto 
Cain, in token that no man finding him should 
kill him. (Gen. iv. 15.) This sign was certainly 
of a miraculous nature, and not an ordinary phe- 
nomenon ; otherwise it would not have afforded 
him any more lively satisfaction than God's bare 
promise. If God had said unto him, I do set my 
sun in the heavens, and it shall be for a token 
that no man shall kill thee, what degree of assu- 
rance would such a sign have afforded to his 
desponding mind ? Yet of the same comfortless 
nature would have been the token of the rainbow 
to Noah, that the waters should no more become 
a flood to destroy all flesh, if that phenomenon 
had been familiar to the Antediluvians. If the 
course of nature was violated to assure Hezekiah 
of the continuance of his life, is it an improbable 
supposition that God should do some new thing 
to convince Noah of his safety in a restored world. 
It is the remoteness of the transaction, and our 
slight interest in it, that reconciles us to the 
notion that God, at that time, merely appointed 
the bow as a token of his covenant. But God's 
dealings are constant, and a thousand years are 
only as one day in his sight ; whilst man's judg- 
ment is powerfully influenced by the recentness 
of events, and their importance to himself. If 
Christ had appointed the bow as a token of the 
resurrection of the body, and as a sign of the 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 131 

covenant between himself and mankind, that he 
would make their peace with God, could we, in 
this case, bring ourselves to acquiesce in the 
sufficiency of such a pledge ? But Christ knew 
better what was in man, and what the earnest 
longings of our nature required. When, there- 
fore, he was asked, "What sign shewest thou, 
seeing that thou doest these things ? Jesus an- 
swered, Destroy this temple, and in three days I 
will raise it up. He spake of the temple of his 
body." (John ii. 18. Matt. xii. 39.) It is not 
likely, then, that the awful occasion of the deluge, 
wherein comfort and support were so much 
needed, should constitute the solitary exception 
to God's usual dealings. Because rain is com- 
mon and necessary now, we are apt to suppose 
that it has always been so ; except for this bias, 
I think that no one could consider the bow as a 
familiar appearance on reading the account of it 
in Gen. ix. 12 — 15. " And God said, This is 
the authenticating token, which I exhibit, of the 
covenant between me and you, and every living 
creature that is with you, for perpetual genera- 
tions ; (13) My bow I exhibit in the cloud, and it 
shall be for the authenticating token of the cove- 
nant between me and the earth. (14) And it 
shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over 
the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud; 
(15) And I will remember my covenant, which 

k 2 



132 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

is between me and you, and every living creature 
of all flesh ; and the waters shall no more become 
a flood to destroy all flesh." In verse 14, Noah 
is specially advertised when and where he was to 
expect its appearance, as concerning some new 
thing ; which notice that there should be rain, 
but not to the overflowing of a flood, will appear 
far from needless, when we consider the terror 
that must have seized on this remnant of a de- 
stroyed world, on a repetition of those wondrous 
and fearful waterdrops, and what unspeakable 
comfort God's predicted sign in the cloud would 
afford them: "The bow shall be in the cloud, 
and I will look upon it, that I may remember the 
everlasting covenant between God and every 
living creature." 

St. Paul classes Noah among those eminent 
persons who had exhibited extraordinary instances 
of faith : " By faith, Noah being warned by God 
of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, pre- 
pared an ark to the saving of his house." (Heb. 
xi. 7.) We know that, at present, heavy rains 
will sometimes produce floods, so as to inundate 
whole districts, and cause great loss of life ; now 
if rains and floods were things not seen as yet, it 
adds greatly to his faith in building the ark, and 
in bearing the scoffs of that violent generation. 
Although the fountains of the great deep were 
broken up, yet rain seems to have been a promi- 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 133 

nent agent of destruction, as God forewarned 
Noah : "yet seven days and I will cause it to 
rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, 
and every living substance that I have made will 
I destroy from off the face of the earth," (vii. 4.) 
Now, if Noah were commissioned, unless they 
repented, to threaten that wicked race with the 
unheard of punishment of a flood from heaven, 
he would little disturb their godless revelry which 
they kept up, " eating and drinking, marrying 
and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah 
entered into the ark." Matt. xxiv. 38. 

Kindred spirits of the present day scoff at 
Moses for asserting that God then set his bow in 
the cloud. The same causes, say they, must ever 
have produced the same effects ; and the rainbow 
must often have been seen during the sixteen 
centuries before the flood. Such reasoning is 
correct enough ; but, were the premises to be 
questioned, they would be rather at a loss to 
prove the existence of rain in those times so little 
analogous to our own. We should never have 
believed, if we had not learned in the sacred 
history, that the Antediluvians ate no flesh, or 
that they lived so long ; and yet, such a state of 
the atmosphere, as did not admit of the condensa- 
tion of vapour into drops of rain, is not more im- 
possible to conceive than such a constitution of 
the human frame, as did not require flesh for its 



134 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

support, and could stand the wear of a thousand 
years. If God has asserted that he did, at that 
time, exhibit his bow in ratification of his cove- 
nant, can unbelievers expect that we should give 
less heed to his sure word than to their unproved 
assertions? " Yea, let God be true, and every 
man a liar;" and as long as the Bible is not in- 
consistent with itself, the difficulty of reconciling 
it with the objections of its enemies need not 
cause us any great uneasiness. 

The only passage in the narrative that bears in 
the least upon the subject is contained in Gen. ii. 
4 — 6 ; but as the present version of it is very 
obscure, I shall here offer a new translation and 
arrangement (a) : — 

" Such is the account of the heavens and the earth at their 
creation, 
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 

Now before any shrub of the field was in the earth 
And before any plant of the field sprung up, 
Although the Lord God rained not on the earth 
And there was not a man to dress the ground, 
There went up a mist from the earth 
And watered the whole face of the ground." 

The first chapter, I conceive, should have been 
extended beyond the six days of creation, so as to 
contain the sanctifying of the seventh day to rest, 
and perhaps to end with the full close, " Such is 
the account of," &c. The second chapter would 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 135 

then return to and amplify certain passages worthy 
of a particular account, but which would have 
interrupted the simple narrative of the creation : 
such are the place of Adam's abode, the naming 
of the creatures, the different formation of Eve, 
&c. The meaning of the six lines, " Now before 
any shrub," &c. appears to be simply this : Pre- 
viously to the existence of any vegetation, although 
there was neither rain from heaven nor irrigation 
from man, yet God had provided the necessary 
supply of moisture by means of the atmosphere 
affording dew. 

The argument from analogy, as already stated, 
seems to prove that the rainbow was a phenome- 
non unknown to the Antediluvians ; and the 
general argument, now to be brought forward, 
does not appear to be at variance with the suppo- 
sition that there was no rain before the flood. 

A literal application of the words of Scripture 
to support a system of natural philosophy, and a 
total disregard to them concerning a physical fact, 
are extremes equally faulty ; and those over zeal- 
ous persons who convicted Galileo of heresy for 
teaching the annual and diurnal revolution of the 
earth, did certainly not betray any greater degree 
of ignorance or weakness of intellect than the scep- 
tical Voltaire, who asserted that a general inun- 
dation of our globe is a physical impossibility (b). 
Although a Divine revelation is given entirely for 
7 



136 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

moral and religious purposes, yet we may be sure 
that it contains no untruths on the subjects of 
natural philosophy ; wherever, therefore, the 
Bible affords any intimation of a physical fact 
with a moral purpose, (for instance, that God 
brought a flood of waters, and, after it, did exhibit 
his bow in the cloud,) we are bound to give it a 
full and serious consideration. I firmly believe 
in the occurrence of these two facts in the manner 
there recorded, and am instructed by the moral 
lessons they were intended to convey ; and though 
I look not to my Bible for an explanation of the 
physical causes, yet am I fully persuaded, that 
the facts themselves will not be found inconsistent 
with the deductions of reason. Geology asserts, 
" that numberless phenomena have been already 
ascertained, which, without the admission of an 
universal deluge, it seems not easy, nay, utterly 
impossible to explain ;" and the time and purpose 
of such a catastrophe, it finds recorded in the 
sacred history. According to the same authority, 
"the occurrence of bones in caves, under such 
circumstances as those at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, 
is decisive in establishing the fact, that the ele- 
phant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and hyaena, 
animals which are at present exclusively confined 
to hot climates, were the Antediluvian inhabitants, 
not only of England, bit of the polar regions of 
the north." (Buckland's Reliquiae Diluvianae.) 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 137 

Geology hence infers a change of temperature in 
these countries ; and revelation informs us that 
not till after the deluge, did God exhibit his bow 
in the cloud : a fact clearly inconsistent with the 
existence of rain before the flood, and which neces- 
sarily supposes a difference of climate in the two 
worlds. 

In the old world, it is extremely probable that 
the atmosphere was so uniformly temperate, as 
never to be subject to storms and rains, or to be 
rent by collisions of the electric fluid ; at any rate, 
it is quite certain that the climate, from whatever 
cause, was better adapted to the perfection of the 
animal part of man, as his life approached upon 
a thousand years. The curtailing of man's exist- 
ence down to its present dwindled span, dates its 
commencement from the deteriorating effects of 
the deluge. Vegetation also suffering from the 
change, would afford a less kindly aliment for his 
support ; hence flesh for food, and perhaps wine, 
were now first given as actually necessary to 
withstand the effects of a vitiated atmosphere ; 
although these powerful, yet harsh stimulants, 
might themselves contribute to shorten life. But 
whatever were the channels through which the 
sinister influence acted upon the Postdiluvians, 
we can have no doubt of the result produced, that 
the days of the years of their life attained not 



138 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

unto the days of the years of their Antediluvian 
forefathers. 

The atmosphere even now contains such a 
mass of water in solution, that were it all preci- 
pitated, it might probably be sufficient (as Bishop 
Watson observes, in his "Chemical Essays,") to 
cover the surface of the whole earth to the depth 
of above thirty feet. But astronomers and geolo- 
gists, though drawing their conclusions from very 
different phenomena, do both agree in the opinion 
that the temperature of the earth is greatly dimi- 
nished from what it once was. Therefore, before 
the flood, it is not impossible that the air, by 
containing more caloric, was permanently endued 
with a stronger solvent power ; and that, by hold- 
ing a larger quantity of water in solution, it 
afforded more copious dews in the place of rain. 
On this supposition, also, the heavenly reservoirs 
would supply ampler means for deluging the 
world at the general breaking up of the course of 
nature at that time. 

If the general temperature at the time of the 
flood was much lowered, the solvent power of the 
air, and the equilibrium of the electric fluid, 
might undergo a change conducive to the forma- 
tion of rain, and unfavourable to the duration of 
human life (c). That this awful event was accom- 
panied, at least, with a great and sudden change 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 139 

of temperature, is capable of demonstration, 
as the deluge has erected to itself a lasting 
monument, which is a faithful witness on this 
point. " In northern countries, it arrested and 
encased in ice the carcasses of large quadrupeds, 
which have been preserved down to the present 
time with their skin, their hair, and their flesh. 
If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, 
putrefaction would have decomposed them ; yet 
this enduring frost did not previously exist there, 
for they are animals which could not have existed 
in such a temperature ; the same instant that 
they were bereft of life, the country which they 
inhabited became frozen." (Cuvier, on the Re- 
volutions of the Surface of the Globe.) " At 
present, I am concerned only to establish two 
important facts ; 1st. That there has been a re- 
cent and general inundation of the globe ; and, 
2d. That the animals whose remains are found 
interred in the wreck of that inundation, were 
natives of high north latitudes, and not drifted to 
their present place from equatorial regions, by 
the waters that caused their destruction. One 
thing, however, is nearly certain, namely, that if 
any change of climate has taken place, it took 
place suddenly ; for how otherwise could the ele- 
phant's carcase, found entire in ice at the mouth 
of the Lena, have been preserved from putrefac- 



140 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

tion till it was frozen up with the waters of the 
then existing ocean ? Nor is it less probable that 
this supposed change was contemporaneous with, 
and produced by, the same cause which brought 
on the inundation. What this cause was, whether 
a change in the inclination of the earth's axis, or 
the near approach of a comet, or any other cause, 
or combination of causes, purely astronomical, is 
a question, the discussion of which is foreign to 
the object of the present memoir." (Buckland's 
Reliq. Diluv.) We are here told of a sudden 
change of temperature, produced at the same 
time, and by the same cause, as the deluge ; and 
are not these the very circumstances we should 
expect to accompany the sudden appearance of 
rain for the first time at the flood ? By pointing 
out this biblical genealogy of rain, and showing 
its relation to geological discoveries, I would 
drive out the scorner from the possession of the 
rainbow, as he has already yielded up all claim 
upon the deluge ; and would add one more to the 
accumulated proofs, which establish the authen- 
ticity of the Book of Genesis from its own internal 
evidence (J). 

On such a subject as the present, verbal criti- 
cism may fairly be applied, not indeed in proof, 
but in confirmation of the argument ; and I can- 
not but bring forward, with this view, the passage 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 141 

of Genesis already quoted. On the first day of 
creation, at the fiat of the Almighty, light, the 
subtlest of the elements, sprung into existence. 
On the second, was formed the expanse of air, 
which, by its solvent power, drew up a mass of 
vapour, constituting the waters above the firma- 
ment. In this manner, the atmosphere both 
helped to drain the earth of some of its super- 
abundant waters, and was ready to afford a supply 
of dew to vegetation against its creation on the 
third day. 

" Now, before any shrub of the field was in the earth, 
And before any plant of the field sprung up, 
Although the Lord God rained not on the earth 
And there was not a man to dress the ground, 
There went up a mist from the earth 
And watered the whole face of the ground." 

This passage seems to point out the commence- 
ment of a period, during which there was no rain, 
and in which vegetation was supported by means 
of dew alone. A different dispensation of Provi- 
dence, at a particular time, is declared to us ; 
and we should hardly be justified in saying, 
that it was impossible for that state of things 
to have continued down to the great atmospherical 
changes which undoubtedly took place at the 
flood. 

I have now endeavoured to show — (1.) That to 



142 THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. 

maintain the consistency observable in the deal- 
ings of Providence, as revealed to us in the 
Bible, the bow must necessarily have been seen, 
for the first time, after Noah's leaving the ark ; 
and (2.) That physiological reasonings, as far 
as they extend, do not oppose themselves to 
the hypothesis, that there was no rain before the 
flood. 

The heavenly wisdom of the Hebrews led them 
to attribute every natural phenomenon to the 
immediate agency of the Creator ; but the pro- 
gress of human knowledge enabling us to trace 
them to their second causes, our minds are too 
apt to rest there with a weak and blameable indif- 
ference. Yet, thunder and the rainbow might 
well teach us this lesson of raising our thoughts 
above the creature to the great Creator ; surely, 
these are so far above us and beyond us, as to 
usher in at once the present Deity. The one is 
fearfully adapted to raise in us feelings of asto- 
nishment and awe towards the powerful and 
offended Jehovah : 

" Jehovah thundered out of heaven, 
The Most High uttered his voice. 
The voice of Jehovah is full of power, 
The voice of Jehovah is full of majesty." 

Psalm xviii. 13 ; xxix. 4. 

The other should fill us with sentiments of admi- 



THE RAINBOW A PROPHETIC SIGN. J 43 

ration and love towards a reconciled and cove- 
nanted God : 

" Look upon the bow, and praise him that made it ; 
Very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof : 
It compasseth the heaven with a glorious circle, 
And the hands of the Most High have bended it." 

Ecclus. xliii. 11. 









NOTES 



ESSAY I 



(a) It is generally supposed'] Some of the grounds 
afforded by Scripture for believing" that, in the time of 
Moses, there existed a traditional knowledge of the most 
important points in the primitive history of mankind, may 
be seen in Bishop Blomfleld's " Dissertation on the Tra- 
dition of the Promise." 

(b) Tliese are the generations'] There are two words of 
very different meanings m^n and nn, the jevegiq and 
ysvea of the Septuagint and Greek Testament, which by 
our translators, both in the Old and New Testaments, are 
almost invariably rendered by the same term "genera- 
tion." The first (that which occurs above) means an 
account, tradition, or genealogy; the second, a generation 
of contemporary men, or the manner of life in that gene- 
ration. In some passages it is of consequence to attend 
to this last distinction. Isa. liii. 8. Luke xvi. 8. " The 
children of this world are in their manner of life," &c. 
(Gen. vi. 9.) In the passage 1 Tim. i. 4. translated 
above " endless fabulous traditions," I have no doubt that 
yeveaXoyta also is the representative of m^in ; Castalio 
renders it, " Fabulas et antiquitates infinitas." 

L 



146 NOTES. 

(c) Hebrew parallelism'] As mention is here made of 
Hebrew parallelism, and many instances of it occur in the 
sequel, it may not be amiss to say a few words on the 
subject. 

The distinguishing characteristic of Hebrew poetry is 
parallelism, or a certain relationship between the members 
of each period ; so that, in one or more lines or members 
of the same period, things shall answer to things, and 
words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule 
or measure. (Bishop Lowth, Prselect. 19.) An attention 
to this peculiarity in the composition of Scripture is 
accompanied with many advantages ; it greatly assists in 
determining the sense of doubtful passages ; in removing 
grammatical difficulties and intricacies of construction ; 
and in bringing into notice the less obvious beauties of 
style and argument in the sacred volume. Several other 
benefits might be mentioned ; but I have confined myself 
to these, as it is my purpose to bring an example of each 
from the New Testament 

(1.) The passage of St. Mark xii. 24 — 27. quoted in 
Essay X. labours under no difficulty requiring explana- 
tion; yet it is drawn up with a fitness of arrangement, 
and a closeness of reasoning far beyond what is observable 
at a first view, and such as the common prosaic form of it 
would hardly lead us to suspect. 

" And Jesus answering said unto them : — 

" Do ye not hence err, 
Because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God ? 

For when they shall have risen from the dead, 
They neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
But are as the angels which are in heaven. 






NOTES. 147 

And as touching the dead that they are raised, 

Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God 

spake unto him, 
Saying, T am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and 

the God of Jacob ? 

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living ; 
Ye therefore do greatly err." 

According to a common method with our Saviour in 
teaching, the subject is laid down in the first line — the 
error of the Sadducees. It is then enlarged upon in the 
next line, and their error traced to a twofold source, — an 
ignorance of the Scriptures, and of the power of God. 
These two charges are then taken up and proved in the 
following triplets. In the first is exposed their ignorance 
of the power of God ; if God, having created man out of 
the dust, has determined to raise him again from the dust 
after death, the same power that created will surely be 
able to revive man, notwithstanding any difficulties which 
may occur to your worldly minds. His purpose is to raise 
the dead in a glorified body, free from all animal propen- 
sities ; " they neither marry nor are given in marriage," 
but are spiritually-minded, and engaged in the same 
heavenly services as the ministering angels. In the other 
triplet is pointed out their ignorance of the spirit of Scrip- 
ture; and as they had drawn their objection from the law 
of Moses, our Saviour very pointedly refutes them from 
the same authority, " I am the God of Abraham ;" not, 
I was. This inference he shows them in the next line 
that they might have made for themselves from this pas- 
sage, if they had read it with the understanding. And, 
lastly, closing as he had begun, he brings against them 
the original charge; but now, after clear proof, he asserts 

L 2 



148 NOTES. 

it with redoubled force, "Ye therefore do greatly err." 
This illustration is in the manner of Bishop Jebb, who 
was the first to place the writings of the Evangelists and 
Apostles on the same footing with those of the ancient 
Prophets. 

(2.) In Matt. xv. 3 — 6. the arrangement by parallelisms 
affords a key to the due connexion of the clauses, and to 
the clearing up of the grammatical construction. But 
before the proposed translation can be fully understood, it 
is necessary to premise this critical remark. In condi- 
tional sentences, where the second member depends on 
the first, the Hebrews said, " If so and so, and so and so," 
where we should say then, or omit the particle altogether, 
thus — " If it be a son and ye shall kill him, but if it be a 
daughter and she shall live." Exod. i. 16. In this pecu- 
liarity the Hebrew original is often literally followed by 
the Septuagint version, which, in its turn, is sometimes 
imitated in the Greek Testament. For example, 1 Sam. 
xii. 15. lav fit} atcovGrire, if ye will not obey, kcii larat 
then (and) shall the hand of the Lord be against you ; 
and 1 Chron. xix. 12. lav Kpar^ri v7rsp jlle, if the Syrian 
be too strong for me, \cai lari julol elg (ruirripiav then (and) 
shalt thou help me. The same idiom obtains in this place 
of St. Matthew : lav sliry, if a man say, Kai ov fir] rt/x^o-y, 
then (and) he shall not honour. The passage, then, cor- 
rectly translated and arranged, is as follows : 

" And he answered and said unto them : 

" Why do yourselves also break the commandment of God through your 
tradition ? 

For God commanded : 
Saying, Honour thy father and thy mother, 
And he that revileth father or mother shall surely die ; 



NOTES. 149 

Whereas ye say: 
If one declare to father or mother, An offering be thy due relief, 
Then he shall not honour his father or his mother ; 

Truly ye have done away the commandment of God through your tradition." 

Here, the clause " Honour thy father" is clearly opposed 
to " He shall not honour his father;" and the reviling 
mentioned generally in the fourth line is exemplified in 
the next line by a particular instance, " An offering be 
thy due relief;" which is as if the undutiful son should 
say to his parents, " May mischief befal me, if ever I 
help you in the least." 

(3.) The arrangement by parallelisms fixes at once the 
meaning of the doubtful word, " For of such" in Mark x. 
14. " Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such 
is the kingdom of God." This example is of some conse- 
quence, as doctrine and practice are affected by it. A 
common interpretation of the words is, that a man cannot 
enter heaven without the purity and simplicity of a little 
child; but a slight consideration of the parallelism points 
out a very different meaning. I must previously observe, 
however, that the original words, twv yap tolovtujv han, 
can be translated in no other manner than " For to such 
belongs ;" and this is the way in which the same idiom is 
rendered in Matt. v. 3. " Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven :" not, Of them is, 
but, To them belongs, the kingdom of heaven. 

" And he spake unto them : 
Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, 
For to such belongs the kingdom of God. 

Verily, I say unto you : 
Unless a man receive the kingdom of God as a liitle child, 
He shall not enter therein." 



150 NOTES. 

Little children form the entire subject of the first part of 
this speech, and adults that of the remainder. Each line, 
too, contrasts with its corresponding line : " To such 
(little children) belongs the kingdom of God," is evidently 
opposed to " He (that adult) shall not enter therein." 
The idea is briefly and beautifully expressed by a Christian 
poet : — 

" Children and childlike souls are there." 

Keble's Christian Year. 

If I am right in understanding the phrase, " kingdom 
of God or of heaven," in the sense of the Gospel dispen- 
sation or the Church of Christ, which is its usual meaning 
in the Gospels (Matt. iii. 2 ; xiii. 47.), we learn from this 
passage that little children have the privilege of being 
admitted into Christ's Church. In this view of it, the 
passage comes nearer to a direct precept for baptizing 
little children than any which the Scriptures afford. 

Should these remarks on Hebrew Poetry succeed in 
raising a desire for farther information on the subject, that 
wish may be amply gratified by a perusal of Bishop 
Jebb's " Sacred Literature." His work has shed an entirely 
new light on the beauties and difficulties of the Christian 
Scriptures; and is alike distinguished for its tone of 
piety, its scriptural skill, and general learning. 



NOTES 



ESSAY II. 

(a) A week.~\ Besides ynttf, the Hebrews used the word 
ED»0> (days) in the sense of a week. It certainly means a 
definite period : either that of a year, as in the common 
expression from year to year, Exod. xiii. 10. : or that of a 
week, as in the above passages from Genesis and elsewhere. 
Both senses occur in Num. ix. 22. " Whether it were a 
week, or a month, or a year''' Compare Dan. viii. 27. 
("I, Daniel, fainted and was sick [certain] days, i.e. a 
week, and I was astonished at the vision,") with Ezek. iii. 
15. (" The hand of the Lord was strong upon me, and I 
came to them of the captivity, and remained there aston- 
ished seven days.' 5 ) "In those days I, Daniel, was mourn- 
ing three full weeks," x. 2, and Nehem. i. 4. In the sin- 
gular number inN DV is one day, but in the plural of 
both it is one week ; similarly " one word" in the plural of 
both signifies "one language," Gen. xL 1. The same 
idiom prevails in Latin : una litter a, one letter of the al- 
phabet; in the plural, unce litterce, one epistle. 

(b) His name JEHOVAH.~\ The Mosaic dispensation 
had two great objects in view : the one, more remote, but 
more interesting to Christians, was the preparation for 
Messiah's kingdom : the other, more immediately neces- 
sary and accomplished at once, was to afford a proof of 



152 NOTES. 

the unity of God, and his direct superintendence over the 
affairs of the whole world, in contradistinction to the many- 
local gods of the heathen, whether as independent deities, 
or intermediate agents of some supreme, but remote being. 
This latter object is clearly pointed out in Exod. vi. 3., 
w T hich may be considered the key to all that part of the 
history ; but it is unfortunately greatly obscured in our 
translation ; — "I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, 
and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by 
my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." The 
marked opposition in this sentence would lead us to ex- 
pect a decided difference between the two names, but 
there is no such difference between God Almighty and 
Jehovah. Again, it is not correct to say that the name 
Jehovah was unknown to the Patriarchs, for that title is of 
much more frequent occurrence in the original than the 
name of God Almighty (Shaddai,) which, on the contrary, 
is but very seldom mentioned. I would, therefore, trans- 
late the passage thus : — " I appeared unto Abraham, unto 
Isaac, and unto Jacob, in the character of a bountiful or 
providential God; but my name JEHOVAH did I not 
signalize, or make proof of, to them." The history fully 
proves the truth of this distinction ; not that Abraham 
was ignorant of the full extent of God's attributes, but it 
was not God's design in his different revelations to the 
Patriarchs, to give experience of and to signalize (SrjAwo-cu 
LXX) his name Jehovah by means of miracles, which 
was the more immediate object of his revelation to Moses* 
Abraham's idea of God may be collected from the follow- 
ing passages : — " Abraham said to the king of Sodom, I 
have lift up mine hand to Jehovah the Most High God, 
the possessor of heaven and earth," Gen. xiv. 22. " And 
Abraham said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with 



NOTES. 153 

the wicked, that be far from thee : Shall not the Judge of 
all the earth do right ?" xviii. 25. " And Abraham called 
there on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God," xxi. 
33. God's dispensation towards the Patriarchs was en- 
tirely personal; Jehovah exercised a visible providence 
over those that obeyed him. St. Paul has well described 
their faith, and the character under which they viewed 
their God : — " He that cometh to God must believe that 
he is, and that he is a revvarder of them that diligently 
seek him." " The word of the Lord came unto Abraham 
in a vision, saying, Fear not Abraham: I am thy shield, 
and thy exceeding great reward," xv. 1. " Abraham shall 
surely become a great and mighty nation, for I know him 
that he will command his children," &c. xviii. 19. "I will 
perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father, 
because that he obeyed my voice," &c. xxvi. 5. These 
revelations from the Almighty were not made in order to 
prove himself a great God above all the idols of the 
heathen, but to show himself as a bountiful God, and the 
rewarder of them that diligently seek him. On the other 
hand, the object of his revelations to Moses was expressly 
to signalize his name Jehovah : to give proof not only of 
his providence, but also of his unity and supremacy* 
" Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart' 
that Jehovah he is God in heaven above and upon the 
earth beneath : there is none else," Deut. iv. 39. " 1 will 
multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, 
and the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah," Exod. 
vii. 3. " And in very deed for this cause have I raised 
thee up (Pharaoh), for to shew in thee my power; and 
that my name may be declared throughout all the earth," 
ix. 16., xii. 12. What very limited powers the heathen 
ascribed to the local deities of the nations, may be seen 



154 NOTES. 

from Num. xiv. 15. — " And Moses said unto the Lord, If 
thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations 
which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, 
Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into 
the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain 
them in the wilderness." See also 1 Kings xx. 23, " And 
the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their 
gods are gods of the hills, therefore they were stronger 
than we ; but let us fight against them in the plain, and 
surely we shall be stronger than they." 



NOTES 



ESSAY III. 

(a) Day of the Lord's vengeance.'] " Throughout the 
whole of prophetical Scripture, a time of retribution and 
of vengeance on God's enemies is announced. It is 
called 4 the day of the Lord,' ' the day of wrath and 
slaughter: of the Lord's anger, visitation, and judgment;' 
' the great day, and the last day.' At the same time, it 
is to be observed, that this kind of description, and the 
same expressions, which are used to represent this great 
day, are also employed by the prophets to describe the 
fall and punishment of particular states and empires ; of 
Babylon, by Isaiah xiii ; of Egypt, by Ezekiel xxx. 2 — 4, 
and xxxii. 7 ; of Jerusalem, by Jeremiah, Joel, and by 
our Lord, Matt. xxiv. : and in many of these prophecies, 
the description of the calamity, which is to fall on any 
particular state or nation, is so blended and intermixed 
with that general destruction, which, in the final days of 
vengeance, will invade all the inhabitants of the earth, 
that the industry and skill of our ablest interpreters have 
been scarcely equal to separate and assort them. Hence 
it has been concluded, by judicious divines, that these par- 
tial prophecies and particular instances of the Divine ven- 
geance, whose accomplishment we know to have taken 
place, are presented to us as types, certain tokens and 



156 NOTES. 

forerunners, of some greater events which are also dis- 
closed in them. To the dreadful time of universal ven- 
geance, they all appear to look forward, beyond their first 
and more immediate object. Little, indeed, can we doubt 
that such is to be considered the use and application of 
these prophecies, since we see them thus applied by our 
Lord and his Apostles." Woodhouse on the Apocalypse, 
p. 172. 

(b) This Assyrian ivith Babylon.~\ " The Assyrians and 
Babylonians are the same people, Herod. I. 199, 200. 
Babylon is reckoned the principal city in Assyria : ibid. 
178. Strabo says the same thing, lib. xvi. sub init." 
Bishop Lowth's note on Isai. xiv. 25. " In the year B. C. 
623., Nabopolassar destroyed the Assyrian and founded 
the Chaldse-Babylonian empire, which also is sometimes 
called the Assyrian in the Bible, and frequently by the 
Greek writers." Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth, Book v. 
Sect. 42. 

(c) The overthroio of Babylon.'] " Babylon is so utterly 
annihilated, that even the place where this wonder of the 
world stood, cannot now be determined with any cer- 
tainty." Bishop Lowth's note. 

(d) The tongue of the Egyptian sea.] " The tongue of 
the Egyptian sea is that bay of the Red Sea, over which 
the Israelites passed." Vitringa. The river is the great 
river Euphrates. 



m m 



NOTES 



ESSAY IV. 

(a). To put his name there] In Ecclesiasticus xxiv. we 
meet with a similar idea ; the chapter is entitled " the 
praise of wisdom," and presents us with a favourable 
specimen of the uninspired poetry of the Hebrews, 
Wisdom, having stated her heavenly origin, and her 
wanderings over the earth in search of a settlement, pro- 
ceeds thus : — 

" Among all these I sought a resting-place, 
But in whose inheritance shall I dwell ? 
Then directed me the Creator of all, 
And my Maker fixed my tabernacle — 
And said : 

' In Jacob pitch thy tabernacle, 
And in Israel receive thy portion.' 
Before the former age he created me, 
And unto the age I shall not fail. 
In the holy tabernacle before him I served, 
And thus was I established in Sion ; 
In the beloved city also he fixed me, 
And in Jerusalem was my power ; 
And I took root in a glorious people, 
In the Lord's portion of his inheritance. 

He maketh wisdom run over as Pison, 
And as Tigris in the time of new fruits ; 
He filleth up understanding as Euphrates, 
And as Jordan in the time of harvest ; 
He cleareth up instruction as light, 
As Gihon in the time of vintage ; 



158 NOTES. 

Not perfectly did the first man know her, 

Neither so shall the last trace her out; 

For her thoughts are more deep than the sea, 

And her counsels than the great abyss. 

And I, as a canal from a river, 

And as a water-course, entered Paradise. 

I said : 

I will water my garden, 

And will saturate my plat ; 

When, lo ! 

My canal became a river, 

And my river became a sea." 

The four rivers of Eden are here mentioned together 
with Jordan, as having some quality in common between 
them ; and what can this be, but the circumstance that 
God had chosen the countries of Jordan and the Pison 
for the earthly dwelling-place of Divine wisdom. Canaan, 
the country of the Jordan, and Eden, the land of the four 
rivers, were respectively chosen as the place which the 
Lord did choose to put his name there. 

" He clear eth up instruction as light." Since this 
light is mentioned together with the four rivers of Eden, 
I suppose this learned Jew refers to the Zohar or Light, 
which Noah was commanded to make for the ark. (Gen. 
vi. 16.) In our version it is rendered window, which is 
the proper meaning of the very different word Khalun, viii. 
6. ; but the Jewish Doctors understood Zohar (splendour J 
in a very different way. Onkelos renders the text, " A 
light thou shalt make," as he had before spoken of God's 
making two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, 
&c. R. Levi in Rabboth says, During the whole twelve 
months that Noah was shut up in the ark, he needed 
neither the light of the sun by day, nor the light of the 
moon by night; for there was a jewel belonging to him 



notes. ioy 

which he hung up in the ark ; and as that waxed dim, he 
knew that it was day, but as the lustre of it was more 
intense, he knew that it was night. In accordance with 
this opinion, Ben Uzziel paraphrases the passage thus : 
Go thou to Pison, and take thence a precious stone ; and 
place it in the ark, that it may give thee light. The 
ancients in general agree that there was in the ark some 
manifestation of the glory of the Lord, or of the Divine 
Shechinah, before which Noah daily offered up prayers 
and intercessions, morning and evening. See the Anno- 
tation on the Zohar of the Ark in Bibliotheca Biblica. 
Vol. i. p. 202 and 239. 

(b) The tree of life'} The opinion that there was only a 
single tree of life, as there was but one tree of know- 
ledge, is so generally received, that I have retained that 
expression, and reserved for a note the reasons that have 
brought me to a different conclusion. 

Kennicott supposes with much probability that all the 
trees, by whose fruit Adam was supported, were equally 
trees of life ; and maintains this view by arguments drawn 
from the difficulties attending the existence of a single 
tree of life. See his Dissertation on the subject. Immor- 
tality was the condition of man's creation : it was not the 
natural effect of eating of this tree, as distinguished from 
the other trees. It depended entirely on his innocence ; 
death entered by sin ; and the tree could be no tree of 
life, but by preserving him from disobedience, w T hich it did 
not do. As long as Adam was innocent, he was at full 
liberty to eat of the tree of life ; and even if he had not 
availed himself of it, we may be sure that the serpent 
would have reminded Eve of it, as a security against the 
threatened evil of disobedience. If, the tempter might 
have said — " If, when ye have tasted this tree of know- 



160 NOTES. 

ledge, and are become equal to God, ye imagine death 
will be the consequence, ye have at hand a tree of life : 
repair to that, and ye shall then be equal to God both in 
knowledge and immortality." Neither is the opinion, that 
the tree was of a sacramental nature, more free from diffi- 
culties ; for it seems that it would have secured immortality 
to Adam after the fall — " lest he put forth his hand (after 
the transgression) and eat and live for ever ;" but this is 
inconsistent with the very nature of a sacrament, which is 
efficacious not through the opus operatum, but from the 
faith of the receiver. 

To Kennicott's argument on this point, I would add 
that the tree could not be of a sacramental nature, for it is 
spoken of at the consummation of all things not as the 
means, but the end : not the sign, but the very thing sig- 
nified ; " Blessed are they that do his commandments, 
that they may have right to the tree of life." (Rev. xxii. 
14.) " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the 
tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." 
(ii. 7.) Now, to him that hath overcome, there is no need 
of any sacraments, for he hath received the end of his 
faith — even the salvation of his soul and immortal life. 
Kennicott may have omitted this argument wittingly; for 
(strange to say) he denies that the tree of life in Revela- 
tions and Ezekiel has any reference to the garden of Eden. 
He thus uselessly throws away the principal argument, 
which has induced me to adopt his opinion concerning the 
trees of life. The great advantage of his view is, that it 
makes the Book of Genesis more consistent with the 
Revelations of St. John, and preserves the unity of the 
scheme of Providence, which it is the object of this work 
to point out. The restoration of fallen man, by means of 
a Redeemer, to immortal life in the Paradise of God, is 



NOTES. 161 

the burden of the Bible. When Kennicott, however, 
asserted that the tree of life in Revelations had no refer- 
ence to the garden of Eden, I cannot but think that the 
text (ii. 7.) escaped him : "To him that overcometh will 
I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of 
the Paradise of God." 

St. John most plainly speaks of trees of life : — " On 
either side of the river, were there the trees of life ; and 
the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations." 
xxii. 2. "At the bank of the river were very many trees 
on the one side and on the other .... By the river, on this 
side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat ; and 
the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for 
medicine." (Ezek. xlvii. 7. 12.) No efforts of criticism 
can reduce these passages to afford only a single tree ; 
but the passages in Genesis may signify either one or 
many trees. The noun yy (tree) like the word sheep in 
English is doubtful ; it is necessarily translated trees in 
Gen. iii. 2. " We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the 
garden," &c. ; and iii. 8. " They hid themselves amongst 
the trees of the garden." The same ambiguity, through 
the medium of the Septuagint, attaches to the Greek 
word %v\ov, in Revelations. 

As man was created immortal, the fruit of the trees of 
life, for such a being, must have been very different from 
any thing we now witness. When he forfeited immorta- 
lity by sin, such sustenance became wholly unsuitable to 
his new state ; he was therefore driven out from Paradise, 
lest he should put forth his hand and eat and live for 
ever ; and was condemned to live upon the coarser pro- 
ductions of a soil, that was now brought under a curse. 
But the Antediluvians never lost sight of this divine fruit; 
and the entrance to Paradise remained visible for the pur- 

M 



162 NOTES. 

pose of keeping up their hopes of readmission through 
the coming of the promised seed; just as their restoration 
to the Holy Land is now connected by the Jews with the 
coming of the Messiah. Lamech gave to his son the 
name of Noah, saying, " This same shall give us rest from 
our labour, And from the burthen of our hands from the 
ground, Which the Lord hath cursed." He, therefore, 
clearly expected that the seed of the woman should give 
them rest by the recovery of Paradise, as the Jews now 
expect that the Son of David shall give them rest by a 
restoration to Canaan. We, Christians, look for a new 
heaven and a new earth, wherein is the tree of life, and 
there shall be no more curse ; and who, on reading the 
reason of Noah's name, can doubt that the faithful among 
the Antediluvians did also look for a new heaven and a 
new earth, wherein was the tree of life, and there should 
be no more curse ; surely, they expected a restoration to 
the innocence and immortality of Paradise. (Vid. Essay 
VII.) There ever remaineth, then, a rest to the people 
of God ; let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us 
of entering into his rest, any of us should seem to come 
short of it : that true rest, of which Paradise and Canaan 
have always been to true believers as comforting pledges 
indeed, yet only faint types and earthly shadowings. 

It is now generally understood that the Tree of know- 
ledge was appointed as a test of good and evil : the tree, 
by which God would try his creatures, and by which it 
should appear, whether they would be good or evil : 
whether or no they would own the sovereignty of their 
Maker, and obey or disobey his commands. In modern 
phraseology, it would be called the Tree of Probation. 



NOTES 



TO 



ESSAY V. 

(a) Probably by fire] From the analogy of God's deal- 
ings, commentators agree in saying that the respect, 
which the Lord had unto Abel and to his offering, was 
shown by means of supernatural fire. " Which way came 
Cain to know, that God had accepted his brother's offer- 
ings and rejected his? Certainly Theodotion's version 
best explains this : — 4 And the Lord sent down flame to 
Abel and his sacrifice, which he did not do to Cain and 
his.' That it was usual with God thus to declare his 
acceptance, we learn from what passed in Solomon's dedi- 
cation of the temple, 2 Chron. vii. 1., and Elias' sacrifice 
upon mount Carmel, 1 Kings xviii. 38. If thou dost 
well, or offerest right, shall not thy sin be done away ; or 
(as Theodotion) shall not thy oblation be as acceptable as 
thy brother's ?" (S. Hieron. Qusest. Heb. Vid. Bibliotheca 
Biblica in loco.) 

The acceptance of Abel's sacrifice by means of fire is 
generally admitted by commentators ; but I have not seen 
it remarked, that the text is capable of that translation. 
" Shalt thou not be accepted?" (Gen. iv. 7.) The verbal 
noun PMW is derived from Kttfa, one of whose meanings is 
to consume with fire : " De igne dicitur, qui sua natura in 
sublime fertur ; item de elevatione fumi, et significat 

m 2 



164 NOTES. 

urere, adurere, comburere. 2 Sam. v. 21." (Leigh's Cri- 
tica Sacra.) I would add, that the passage of Samuel, 
" David burned the images," is in the parallel passage, 
1 Chron. xiv. 12. " He burned them with fire." In Judges 
xx. 40. DKltfD, signifies a flame, as also in Isa. xxx. 27. 
" His wrath burneth, and the flame rageth violently." 
(Bishop Lowth and note.) 

The text of Gen. iv. 7. conveys to myself the following 
meaning : — " If thine offering (Mincha) were right, should 
it not be consumed by fire ? And if it be not right, does 
not a proper sin-offering lie at hand ? Then his desire 
should be unto thee, and thou shouldst rule over him." 
And to this implied loss of birthright, Cain's aggravating 
answer afterwards seems to allude : — "Am I my brother's 
keeper ?" 

(b) Let us go forth into the fleld] This clause, though 
lost from the Hebrew, is still preserved in the Samaritan 
text and Greek version. Cranmer's version is: —And 
Cain spake unto Abell his brother, Let us go forth ; and 
it fortuned, when they were in the felde, &c. And so 
Wickliffe : — And Cain seide to Abel his brother, Go we 
out ; when they weren in the feld, &c. 



NOTES 



ESSAY VI. 



(a) The genealogy of Seth] The two genealogies are 



as follow : — 

1. Adam 

2. Seth 

3. Enos 

4. Cainan 

5. Mahalaleel 

6. Jared 

7. Enoch 

8. Methuselah 

9. Lamech 
10. Noah 



1. Adam 

2. Cain 

3. Enoch 

4. Irad 

5. Mehujael 

6. Methusael 

7. Lamech 

8. Tubal-cain 



(b) Lantech's speech to his ivives~] In this very obscure 
passage, I cannot do better than lay before the reader the 
principal expositions of it that have been offered. 

(1.) Bishop Lowth, following Houbigant, translates: — 
" I have slain a man on account of my wound," that is, in 
self-defence against some one who had violently assaulted 
him. A homicide of this nature he opposes to the volun- 
tary and inexcusable fratricide of Cain. (Prselect. p. 52.) 

(2.) Jacobus Capellus, in his Historia Sacra et Exotica, 
fancies that Lamech, being in a vapoury humour, was 
boasting of his courage, and what he would do if there was 
occasion : " I would or will kill a man, if he wounds me ; 



166 NOTES. 

and a young man, if lie hurts me." Jenning's Jewish 
Antiq. p. 5. 

(3.) The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uz- 
ziel, together with the Arabic version, read the passage 
interrogatively or negatively : Have I slain a man ? that 
is, I have not slain a man, that I should be punished for 
it. Dr. Shuckford, adopting this translation, endeavours 
to explain it by supposing that Lamech was reasoning his 
wives and family out of their fear of having the death of 
Abel revenged upon them, who were of the posterity of 
Cain. As if he had said : — What have we done, that we 
should be afraid ? We have not killed a man, nor offered 
any injury to our brethren of any other family ; and if 
God would not allow Cain to be killed, who had murdered 
his brother, but threatened to take sevenfold vengeance 
on any that should kill him ; doubtless they must expect 
much greater punishment, who should presume to kill any 
of us. Therefore we may surely look upon ourselves as 
safe under the protection of the law, and of the providence 
of God. (Shuckford's Connect, vol. I.) But even if this 
translation be preferred, I conceive that Enoch, and not 
Abel, is the subject of the speech. " Have I slain a man 
to my wounding, or a young man to my hurt ?" Enoch 
was removed from the earth at the early age of 365 years, 
and was contemporary with this Lamech in the seventh 
generation. John the Baptist boldly reproved Herod for 
marrying his brother Philip's wife, by which he gained 
the ill-will of Herodias : " therefore Herodias had a quar- 
rel against him and would have killed him, but she could 
not." (Mark vi. 19.) The tragical history is well known. 
Thus Enoch may have reproved Lamech for his poly- 
gamy, and in like manner have brought down a severe 
persecution on himself. But his supernatural disappear- 



NOTES. 167 

ance afterwards, in connexion with his appalling prophecy, 
may have produced some transient consternation in the 
family of Lamech ; as Herod, having heard of the fame 
of Jesus, said in evident dismay, "It is John whom I 
beheaded ; he is risen from the dead." 

(4.) The Rev. W. Vansittart, in a Dissertation on Cain 
and Lamech, has given an explanation very different from 
any of the foregoing. 

" And Lamech said unto his wives, 
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; 
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech ; 
For I have slain a man for my wound, 
Even a child for my stripes." 

He states, first, that this speech is a prophecy, or a coun- 
terpart of the history of Cain slaying Abel, and uttered by 
Lamech of the seed of Cain, and is prefigurative of the 
rejected Church, who put the Messiah to death : and, 
secondly, that the words wounds and stripes, as they include 
the double signification both of the punishment of sin and 
of the healing of sin, so I understand them in the one 
signification, as if they were expressive of all those cala- 
mities which the Jews have endured as fugitives and vaga- 
bonds in the earth : and in the other signification, when 
repentance shall have happened to the Jewish Church, or 
to any of its members at whatever time, they may be 
paraphrased in this manner : "I have slain a man who 
shall bear those wounds which must otherwise be inflicted 
on me ; even a child of sacrifice, who shall take on himself 
those stripes by which we are healed;" — the same child 
whose birth Isaiah afterwards declared (ix. 5.) ; who was 
wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, 
and whose stripes wrought the chastisement of our peace. 

8 



168 NOTES. 

(liii. 5.) The almost identity of the prophetic expressions 
in use both with Lameeh and Isaiah, will lead us to con- 
jecture that both the one and the other, though Lameeh 
as the most ancient, so the most mysteriously, uttered 
their voices respecting the same suffering Holy Child that 
should be born in due time, p. 21. 

What is meant by Cain being avenged seven times? 
I reply, that his life was sealed, that it was so protected 
that no man should take it in punishment for the shedding 
of Abel's blood ; but that he and his descendants were to 
remain with their lives guaranteed to them from the stroke 
of justice, fugitives and vagabonds in the earth, to be 
signs to the people of God of his having slain Abel, the 
accepted one of God in the antediluvian world. 

What is meant by Lamech's being avenged seventy 
times and seven-fold ? I reply, that the Jews (whom he 
prefigured) who slew the Messiah, were to have their 
lives sealed to them by a much greater degree of protec- 
tion than was granted to Cain, according to the greater 
value of their victim over Abel ; that no arm should strike 
them judicially ; that although their lives were forfeited 
to justice, yet they should not be extirpated, for the slay- 
ing of the Holy One of God, according to the righteous 
sentence, that blood must be shed for blood ; but that the 
Lord God would interfere with justice to preserve them 
in existence to be signs, for the benefit of his people, of 
their having slain the Messiah : they would be preserved 
alive, in a banishment from the presence of God, like as 
Cain went out in unbelief from the face of God. Disser- 
tation, p 37. 

(c) Your redemption draweth nigli] Another and a prin- 
cipal reason of St. James writing his Epistle to the Jewish 
Christians at this time (a.d. 61.) was, to prevent their 



NOTES. 169 

being impatient under their present persecutions or dark 
prospects ; and to support and comfort them, by assuring 
them that " the coming of the Lord was at hand." It is 
evident from the Acts of the Apostles, and many of the 
Epistles, that most of the persecutions which befel the 
Christians arose from the unbelieving Jews. Now, as 
their destruction was approaching swiftly, the evils, which 
the Christians suffered from them, were as swiftly drawing 
to an end. And it was highly proper for St. James to 
put them in mind of these things ; for the prospect of a 
speedy deliverance is one of the greatest motives to pa- 
tience under any calamity. Home's Introduction to the 
Scriptures, vol. iv. 

(d) I will give you rest] The Hebrew verb here trans- 
lated " he shall give us rest," is rendered in the Septua- 
gint by the same word that is found in Matt. xi. 28. " I 
w r ill give you rest ;" a similar meaning occurs in the 
authorized version at Isai. i. 24, " I will ease me of mine 
adversaries." Bp. Jebb has given the following beautiful 
illustration of the passage of St. Matthew : 

" Come unto me, all ye who labour, and are burthened ; 
And I will give you rest : 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; 
For I am meek, and lowly in heart ; 
And ye shall find rest unto your souls ; 
For my yoke is easy, and my burthen light." 

The parallelisms here marked, will, it is presumed, appear 
both unquestionable and intentional, when the related 
lines are brought into contact with each other. 

Come unto me all ye who labour and are burthened ; 
For my yoke is easy, and my burthen light. 



170 NOTES. 

The expressions " to labour and to be burthened," com- 
prehend, in their literal sense, all the modes in which 
working animals are commonly employed. They either 
draw or carry. In the former case, they wear a yoke — in 
the latter case, they bear a burthen ; which two ideas are 
accordingly repeated, each with an appropriate softening, 
in the latter of these lines : an " easy yoke," a " light 
burthen." The moral meaning of this figurative lan- 
guage is abundantly clear. To labour, is to pursue the 
work of sin and the world, as an operative agent ; it in- 
cludes all the activities of evil. To be burthened, is to 
endure the inflictions imposed by sin and the world, as a 
passive recipient ; it comprehends all the pains and penal- 
ties of evil. To this miserable course of action and en- 
durance, are opposed the blessed activities, and not less 
blessed sufferings, of the Christian life. " My yoke is 
easy ;" it is a service of perfect freedom. " My burthen 
is light;" for, though the Christian has his sorrows, his 
sorrow is sweeter than this world's joy. 

The happy result implied in this cheerful contrast, is 
emphatically promised in the second line, and the promise 
not less emphatically repeated in the fifth line ; here, for 
the sake of clearness, brought together : 

And I will give you rest ; 

And ye shall find rest unto your souls : 

Rest : rest unto the soul ; rest external, and rest internal. 
Rest from a laborious course of evil action — rest from an 
oppressive weight of mental suffering. The former given 
on coming to Christ, that is, taking him for our Master 
instead of the world ; the latter found by perseverance in 
the course recommended in the central couplet. This, as 



NOTES. 171 



it occupies the midmost place, so it is the mainspring of 
the whole encouragement and exhortation : 



that is, 



Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, 
For I am meek, and lowly in heart : 

Take my yoke upon you, for I am meek ; 
And learn of me, for I am lowly in heart. 



1. Engage actively in my service, and you will find me 
an easy master, for I am meek ; I will impose no galling 
yoke, and instead of the toilsome servitude of sin, you 
shall be employed only in labours of love. 

2. Follow my example in passive fortitude, and you 
shall be exempt from all oppressive burthens, for I am 
lowly in heart ; and lowliness of heart is the grand specific 
for converting pains into pleasures and sorrow into joy. 

In order, however, to feel properly the beauty of this 
passage, we must advert to another of a very opposite 
description : 

" For they bind burthens heavy and hard to be borne, 
And impose them on the shoulders of men ; 
But with a finger of their own they will not move them." — Matt, xxiii. 4. 

Our Lord is here speaking of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
and the contrast is very remarkable. They bind together 
several grievous and insupportable burthens; our Lord's 
burthen is but one, is easy, and is light. They impose 
their burthens by force ; our Lord graciously invites his 
followers to take up his burthen at their own election. 
They will not so much as touch their burthens with a 
single finger ; He bare our infirmities, and carried our 
griefs. — Sacred Literature, Sect. XL 

(e) There were turbulent men.] Some of our earlier ver- 



172 NOTES. 

sions, with Luther, call them " tyrants." The Hebrew 
verb blti signifies to fall, fall upon, fall away ; so that the 
noun may mean either an assaulter or apostate. In the 
present passage it has both senses : they were licentious 
unbelievers, whose lawlessness sprang from infidelity. The 
notion of giants seems to have arisen from following the 
version of the LXX. without attending to their peculiar 
use of the word yiyag, which yet they have sufficiently 
explained in Gen. x. 8, " And Cush begat Nimrod : the 
same began to be a giant in the earth ; he was a giant of a 
hunter before the Lord." Men of extraordinary stature 
are called vwepimrjKeig, Num. xiii. 32. 



NOTES 



ESSAY VII. 

(a) Preached in all the world.~] Before the Mosaic dis- 
pensation was finally brought to a close, Jehovah had pro- 
vided the means of offering the Gospel to all the Jews ; 
and as these were scattered throughout every portion of the 
civilized world, we may discern in that dispersion the rea- 
son of our Lord's declaration, — " This Gospel of the king- 
dom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto 
all nations, and then shall the end (of the Jewish age) 
come." An anonymous author in the British Magazine, 
by an ingenious criticism concerning the Magi, (Matt, ii.) 
has rendered this view more complete. 

" The mission of Christ was not an open and general 
one ; it was addressed unto the Hebrew nation first, that 
the chosen children of Abraham might receive it, and be 
the vehicle for imparting its blessings to the Gentiles. 
Seeing, therefore, that Israel abode at a distance in the 
kingdoms of the East, and that Israel was as fully entitled 
to the refusal of Jesus, as the men of Judah to whom he 
was immediately sent, and that before God could ' turn 
to the Gentiles,' it was ' necessary that he should first 
have spoken to them,' we are bound to suppose that He 
provided some adequate means of making to the banished 
seed of Abraham a legal tender of their covenanted rights. 
But we cannot collect that any offer of the Gospel revela- 
tion, previous to its publication to the Gentiles, was made 
to any people other than the Jews, except the Magi. The 



174 NOTES. 

Israelites had been removed into i the cities of the Medes,' 
and their situation was to the east of Palestine, which 
renders the words 6 from the sun rising,' as apt to them, 
as they are absurd when applied to Tartessus and Sheba. 

" The religion of the Magi, worshippers of Oromazdes, 
Mithras, and Arimanes, prevailed under various slight 
modifications from Cappadocia and the Mount Taurus, 
eastward, to Bactriana and the Indus. There is every 
probability that the tribes of Samaria, who " feared other 
gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen," at the 
time of their captivity, and had been more than seven 
hundred years in exile, had long since been Magians 
when our Lord was born. Prudentius does not hesitate 
to affirm that so it was in his days, and is an author who 
deserves the credit of not having spoken at random. 

" There would be a most revolting incongruity in holding 
that some one nation, out of the herd of Gentiles, was in- 
vited to a premature knowledge of truths, which were to 
be gradually, by apostolical preaching, diffused among the 
different peoples of the earth. But the supposition that 
men of authority were summoned from the tribes of Israel, 
to see the infant Messiah, and announce him to their peo- 
ple under the sanction of their miraculous voyage and 
return, and went home to their dwellings crying in the 
wilderness of the east, ' Prepare ye the way of the Lord,' 
is congruous and perfect in itself, while it makes perfect 
the inviolable word of Divine promise. They came not in 
the guise of Persians, Bactrians, or other heathens, ask- 
ing, ' Where is he that shall enlighten the nations,' or 
; save the world ;' but with the purely national interroga- 
tion, ' where is he that is born King of the Jews f That 
attribute of the Messiah was not only the least interesting 
to the nations of all that could be ascribed to him ; it even 



NOTES. 175 

excited their jealousy, and does even to our days, in which 
all who regard it as more than a vague allegory, are looked 
upon with an unfavourable eye. But it was the very ques- 
tion of all others which the men of Israel, if invited at the 
end of the weeks to salute Messiah their Prince, would 
ask." British Magazine, vol. iii. p. 163. 

(b) The prophecy of our Lord.] As I have made such 
ample use of this prophecy in illustrating the close of the 
Antediluvian age, it seems only proper to add a few 
remarks concerning its fulfilment in the last days of the 
Jewish age. 

Upon the approach of the kingdom of heaven, and of 
the new age under the reign of Messiah, holy men were 
commissioned to announce it. John the Baptist came 
preaching and saying, " Repent ye, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." The Apostles were similarly commis- 
sioned by Christ : " As ye go, preach, saying, The king- 
dom of heaven is at hand Verily I say unto you, 

Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till 
the Son of Man be come," Matt. x. Our Saviour him- 
self says (Matt. xvi. 28.) "There be some standing here 
which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of 
Man coming in his kingdom;" or according to Mark ix. 1, 
" till they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
power." Thus the disciples were taught to connect the 
commencement of the kingdom of heaven and the end of 
the Jewish age with the coming of the Son of Man. 

The Apostles, desirous of obtaining farther information 
concerning the destruction of the Temple which their 
Lord had announced, said unto him, "Tell us (1) When 
shall these things be ? and (2) What shall be the sign of 
thy coming, and of the end of the age?" Matt.xxiv. This 
inquiry respects (1) the time when these things should 



176 NOTES. 

happen ; and (2) the signs which should precede the com- 
ing of the Son of Man at the end of the Jewish age. 

I shall here confine myself to those signs which have 
not been sufficiently explained above, or which refer ex- 
clusively to the end of the Mosaic dispensation. 

Ye shall hear of wars, &c, but the end (of the former 
age) is not yet;" these things are only " the beginning of 
sorrows" which lead to that end. 

" This Gospel of the kingdom (these good tidings of 
the new age) shall be preached in all the world, and then 
shall the end (of the former age) come." St. Paul inci- 
dentally mentions to the Colossians (ch. 1. vv. 6 and 23) 
that the Gospel was come not only to them, but to all 
the world, and was preached to every creature under hea- 
ven. He had, therefore, good reason for saying in another 
place, " The Lord is at hand," Phil. iv. 5. ; and St. Peter, 
"The end of all is at hand," 1st Epist.iv. 7. 

" When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, 
spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy 
place." The desolating abomination of the Roman ar- 
mies was seen standing within the holy precincts, when 
Cestius, a. d. 66, assaulted Jerusalem, and penetrated 
into the two northern quarters of the city. Here, indeed, 
was an unequivocal sign that " the coming of the Lord 
draweth nigh ;" James v. 8. " but the end is not yet :" 
there still want four years to the completion of the age. 

" Then let them which be in Judea flee into the moun- 
tains ; but pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, 
for at that time (a. d.66.) shall be great tribulation, &c. 
and except those days should be shortened, there should 
no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days 
shall be shortened." We are told by Josephus that had 
Cestius vigorously followed up his first success, he might 



NOTES. 177 

have taken the city in a short time and put an end to the 
war ; but Tyrannius Priscus and other officers, bribed by 
Florus, who wished to prolong the war, withheld him from 
this design ; and having lost the favourable opportunity, 
he was soon beaten off and retreated hastily. The disci- 
ples, mindful of their Lord's warning, now quitted Jeru- 
salem and fled to Pella, in Persea, a mountainous country, 
and other places under the government of king Agrippa, 
where they found safety. In this providential manner was 
the fate of Jerusalem prolonged a few years, that the 
Christians might escape before the dreadful consummation ; 
and thus the tribulation caused by Cestius was, for the 
elect's sake, shortened by his unexpected retreat. 

" Immediately after the tribulation of those days (viz. by 
Cestius, a.d. 66., for there is no other tribulation we can 
refer to) the sun shall be darkened," &c. The zealots 
were so elated by their success against Cestius, that they 
threw off all restraint and subordination ; they imme- 
diately massacred the royal princes, nobles and high 
priests, and took the whole command into their own 
hands. Thus, by this political anarchy, was the sun of the 
Jewish state darkened, &c. ; indeed, Josephus dates the fate 
of the city from this period. (Jewish War, iv. 18.) 

St. Luke defines the time thus : — " When ye shall 
see these things a fulfilling (or put into a course of fulfil- 
ment), know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand ; 
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass 
away, till all be fulfilled." (chap, xxi.) 

The same Evangelist adds this important circumstance : 
" They shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be 
led away captive into all nations ; and Jerusalem shall be 
trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gen- 
tiles be fulfilled." When our Lord speaks thus in a 

N 



178 NOTES. 

prophecy, concerning which he says, " This generation 
shall not pass away till all be fulfilled," I can understand 
it only by supposing that Jerusalem should be trodden 
down and her inhabitants led away captive in that genera- 
tion, but that they should remain captive and the city 
continue to be trodden under foot till the times of the 
Gentiles should be fulfilled. 

The way in which the disciples afterwards understood 
the coming of the Lord at the end of the Jewish age, and 
the danger which attended the public avowal of that belief, 
are both well illustrated in the case of St. Stephen. " They 
set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not 
to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and 
the law ; for we have heard him say, that this Jesus of 
Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the 
customs which Moses delivered to us .... And they cast 
him out of the city and stoned him." (Acts vi. 13.) 

My conclusion is that the whole of this prophecy re- 
ceived a distinct fulfilment in that marked generation; 
but it is my belief that, when the times of the Gentiles 
are fulfilled, it will receive a much more signal accom- 
plishment, and probably occupy the same portion of time 
as before, whilst a second time all these things are a ful- 
filling. (Vid. Essay III.) 



NOTES 



TO 



ESSAY VIII. 

(a) A period of darkness] " I am the Lord, and there 
is none else : I form the light and create darkness : I make 
peace and create evil : I the Lord do all these things." 
(Isa. xlv. 7.) " This is your hour and the power of dark- 
ness." (Luke xxii. 53.) 

(b) By some powerful antichristian nation] Vid. Faber 
on the Prophecies passim. The possibility of such an 
event may be judged of from the proceedings of the un- 
christian Emperor of the French. 

" The late Ruler of France, amidst his various extensive 
plans of strengthening his power and extending his domi- 
nion, turned his regard to this nation, so long despised, 
forsaken, and oppressed; he called together the most 
distinguished Jews in France and Italy ; and Paris beheld 
the extraordinary spectacle of a representative assembly 
of a part of the Hebrew nation, convened by the com- 
mand of a powerful European state. (Vid. Transactions 
of the Parisian Sanhedrim, convoked May 30, 1806; 
translated by F. D. Kirwan, Esq. Lond. 1807.) It is 
true that, as might be naturally expected from the cha- 
racter of that despotic government which convened this 
assembly, it enjoyed little freedom or dignity. Its de- 
bates were controlled, and its resolutions dictated by the 

n2 



180 NOTES. 

power which convoked it; and the grand object of its 
formation ultimately appeared to be, to facilitate the 
levying of conscripts ; to subject their religious establish- 
ment to the controul of the state ; and to place their popu- 
lation and their property more immediately within the 
cognizance of the government. Perhaps, also, in the 
questions proposed to them, and in the allurements held 
out to engage them in agriculture and arms, and lead 
them to adopt France for their country, something of the 
spirit of opposition to the supposed tenor of the prophetic 
writings may have lurked." (Graves on the Pentateuch, 
Lect. Ult.) 

(c) Dan shall judge his people. Gen. xlix.] Hippolytus 
declares it his opinion, from the following verse, " Dan 
shall be a serpent by the way," &c. that Antichrist was to 
come of this tribe ; alleging, for his hypothesis, Jer. viii. 
16. " The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan," 
&c. Prosper closes herewith, Promiss. et Prsedict. p. 165. 
And to the same effect St. Ambrose, Benedict. Patriarch, 
c. vii. and in Psalm xl. sect. 25. So also Irenseus, lib. v. 
c. 30. p. 448. and St. August. Qusest. in Jos. n. 22. And 
so Theodoret. Qusest. in Genes, n. 110. urging those 
words, " As one of the tribes of Israel," which, it seems, 
he conceived to intimate, that as our Saviour and Judge, 
descending of the tribe of Judah, was to save the world ; 
so an insidious and dangerous Serpent, of the tribe of 
Dan, was to hurt and destroy. Whence such agreement 
among the Fathers in their opinion, that the tribe of Dan 
was to produce Antichrist, is hard to determine. (Bib- 
liotheca Biblica in loco.) 



NOTES 



ESSAY IX. 

(a) A preparatory preacher distinct from Elijah.'] If 
John were the very Elias spoken of by the prophet Mala- 
chi, he certainly would not have denied it to the priests 
that asked him ; but if he was not, his conduct on that 
occasion is a strong evidence to the truth of his mission, 
for the assumption of Elijah's character, to meet the ex- 
pectations of the Jews of that age, could be the only pos- 
sible inducement for imposture. 

(b) With respect to grammatical accuracy'] In the clause 
" As it is written of the Son of Man," I have adopted the 
various reading, KaQiog, instead of kcu ttioq, for that line, 
like the last one of all, is a complete sentence in itself. 
Farther, the expression, ysypairrai Iva TraOrj, in the sense 
of "it is written that he must suffer" is inconsistent with 
the Greek idiom ; that meaning is usually expressed in 
other parts of Scripture by ytypcnrrai on Set iraOtiv ; the 
construction here is hXevatrai Iva iraOy. 

(c) A tradition handed down by the Fathers'] Trypho 
Judseus apud Justin, in dial. Tertul. lib. de Anima, cap. 
28. Ambros in 1 Cor. 4. August, de Gen. ad lit. lib. 9. 
cap. 7. Gregor. in moral, lib. 14. cap. 12. Gibbens, in 
his Questions on Genesis, says : " They that expect 
Henoch and Eliah to come personallie to reprove the 



182 NOTES. 

world of sin and to be slain of Antichrist, as they would 
prove by Scripture (Rev. xi. 3.), rather then some other 
faithfull servants and ministers of the Gospel, whom the 
Lord either hath or will raise up according to the Scrip- 
ture, may happen to find the ashes and sinders of the 
world, before they be partakers of their expectation." 
Yet he allows that there is hardly a Romanist, or teacher 
in the schools, who has not maintained that expectation. 
Ariosto is sufficient testimony to the opinion of his own 
times : 

Quivi fu assunto, e trovo compagnia ; 
Che prima Enoch il patriarca v'era, 
Eravi insieme il gran profeta Elia, 
Che non han visto ancor l'ultima sera ; 
E fuor dell'aria pestilente e ria 
Si goderan l'eterna primavera, 
Fin che dian segno le angeliche tube, 
Che torni Cristo in sulla bianca nube. 

Orlando Furioso, 34. 59. 



NOTES 



ESSAY X. 

(a) Its place in pagan mytliology\ " That the mytho- 
logical history of the Titanomachia is a corruption of this 
tradition, can hardly be disputed. The Egyptians learned 
it from the Israelites, and the Greeks from the Egyp- 
tians." 

(b) To send Lazarus to iestify~\ The anonymous author 
whom I have already cited, supposes that Lazarus actually 
fulfilled this commission, when " Jesus cried with a loud 
voice, Lazarus, come forth ; and he that was dead came 
forth." 

The author says : — " Certain circumstances strongly 
lead us to the persuasion that he was the brother of Mary 
and Martha. If one Lazarus was the person in whose 
history the secrets of the prison-house are partly revealed 
to us, and another was the person who actually returned 
from the mansions of death, to tell those secrets, the coin- 
cidence would be wonderful. But there is also another. 
Dives was of the Pharisees, by this token, that his brothers 
had Moses and the prophets, that is to say, believed in 
them, although they did not profit by their precepts ; but 
the Sadducees had only Moses. He prayed Abraham to 
send Lazarus from the elysium of death, to his father's 
house, to admonish his brethren ; and Abraham (whose 
power to do this was probably assumed without reason by 

8 



184 NOTES. 

the Pharisee) replied, 4 If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose 
from the dead.' Lazarus was sent back from the grave, 
and lived again among his former acquaintance, and the 
Pharisees icere not persuaded, though one had risen out of 
the corruption of the charnel-house, and they ' consulted 
that they might put Lazarus also to death;' and the words 
of father Abraham were made good. Is it not manifest, 
that we are reading of one man and one transaction, and 
that the account given by John explains that which is 
given by Luke ? I think he must be a little credulous or 
much prejudiced, who will suppose one Lazarus, whose 
unavailing resurrection was talked of, and another Lazarus 
whose resurrection actually occurred. The following is 
the only difficulty I have ever felt. Lazarus was a beggar 
(tttw^oc)? and at one time lay at the rich man's gate, yet 
Mary and Martha were in no great poverty, and were 
also fond of their brother. But I do not think it a serious 
one. The sisters were, probably, of humble condition ; 
and the brother, being, by a grievous disease, entirely 
prevented from maintaining himself, was a pauper (which 
would, perhaps, be a better word than beggar), and was 
permitted, by the usages of his country to seek some 
assuagement of his necessities from the wealthy, especially 
those to whom he was known, as the Lazarus of Abraham 
was to the family of Dives, instead of throwing the entire 
burthen of his maintenance upon his poor relations." 
(British Magazine, vol. iii. p. 48.) 

(c) Went and preached] Similarly St. Paul, writing to 
the Ephesians, says of Christ, c< He came and preached 
peace to you which were afar off and to them that were 
nigh." (ii. 17.) This preaching was not in person, but 
by the Spirit of Christ in the Apostles. 



NOTES. 185 

(b) From the blood of righteous Abel unto the end of the 
age] Such, I conceive, was our Saviour's meaning in this 
address to the Jews. The Zacharias, son of Barachias, 
here spoken of is, indeed, generally supposed to be the 
Zachariah, son of Jehoiada, mentioned in 2 Chron. xxiv. 
20. on the ground that his father's name might be Bara- 
chiah as well as Jehoiada, since it was not unusual among 
the Jews to have two names. But even allowing this 
supposition to be very probable, we have yet to account 
for that generation being chargeable with the blood which 
had been shed from the death of Abel to that of Jehoiada's 
son, b.c. 840, more particularly than for those who had 
been slain from that period up to the time when our 
Saviour spoke. It would seem reasonable to expect that 
they should at least be responsible for the blood they had 
themselves already shed, and were yet to shed, before the 
approaching judgment overtook them. Were they to be 
reputed guiltless of the blood of our Lord himself, of 
Stephen, James, and others of his righteous followers ? 
" Shall not God avenge his own elect ? I tell you that 
he will avenge them speedily." Isaiah, prophetically 
describing the close of the Jewish age, or more probably 
the end of the times of the Gentiles, expresses the very 
idea that I should expect here : 

" I will requite into their bosom their iniquities, 
And the iniquities of their fathers together, saith Jehovah." 

lxv. 7- Bishop Lowth. 

The very form of speech would lead us to suppose that 
our Saviour was speaking of the period between the be- 
ginning of the world and the end of the Jewish age, which 
took place about that time. From the words, " O Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem ! behold, your house is left unto you 



186 NOTES. 

desolate," it is obvious that lie is alluding to the abroga- 
tion of the Mosaic Law at the destruction of the Temple. 
I therefore feel inclined to consider the phrase, ichom ye 
slew, as the language of prophecy, which speaks of future 
events as already past, in order to indicate the certainty 
of them ; and to look, not to the early records of the 
Jews, but to the history of the national downfall, for an 
explanation of the transaction here described. The fol- 
lowing event is related by Josephus : 

" When the zealots were now (a.d. 68.) quite weary of 
mere slaughter, they tried to give a zest to their cruelty 
by establishing a mock tribunal. The victim of this cruel 
refinement was Zacharias, vlog Bapaxov, son of Barach or 
Barachas, one that hated evil and lamented the anarchy of 
his country ; his riches too testified loudly against him. 
In consequence, seventy of the most influential of the 
populace were constituted his judges, and he was accused 
before them of a design to betray the city to the Romans. 
His innocence, of course, was plain enough ; but his 
judges, which was not a matter of course, had the moral 
courage to acquit him. Immediately, two of the leading 
zealots fell upon Zacharias in the middle of the temple, 
and slew him ; and as he fell down dead, they bantered 
him and said, ' Th ou hast also our verdict, and this will 
prove a more sure acquittal to thee than the other.' They 
then struck the judges with the back of their swords, and 
thrust them out of the temple ; and only spared their lives, 
that they might publish to the people what slaves they 
were." — Jewish War, 4, 5. 

If it be objected that St. Luke, in the parallel passage 
xi. 50, speaks of " the blood of all the prophets" and that 
this Zacharias was not a prophet, it may be replied that 
Abel also was not a prophet, at least as far as we can learn 



NOTES. 187 

from Scripture. There is, however, this general simila- 
rity between their characters : Joseplms calls Zacharias 
fiKJowovripog, a hater of evil, and St. John thus contrasts 
Cain and Abel : " Wherefore slew he him ? Because his 
own works were evil, and his brother's righteous," (1st 
Epist. iii. 12.) that is, Abel was disinclined to evil. 

(e) Ventriloquism ivas the means'] That the souls of the 
dead uttered a feeble stridulous sound, very different from 
the natural human voice, was a popular notion among the 
heathens as well as among the Jews. This appears from 
several passages of their poets: Homer, Virgil, Horace. 
The pretenders to the art of necromancy, who were chiefly 
women, had an art of speaking with a feigned voice; so as 
to deceive those who applied to them, by making them 
believe that it was the voice of the ghost. They had a 
way of uttering sounds, as if they were formed, not by 
the organs of speech, but deep in the chest, or in the 
belly; and were thence called " ventriloqui ;" they could 
make the voice seem to come from beneath the ground, 
from a distant part, in another direction, and not from 
themselves; the better to impose upon those who con- 
sulted them : " These people studiously acquire, and 
affect on purpose, this sort of obscure sound ; that by the 
uncertainty of the voice they may the better escape being 
detected in the cheat." (Psellus de Dsemonibus, apud 
Bochart, i. p. 731.) From these arts af the necromancers 
the popular notion seems to have arisen, that the ghost's 
voice was a weak, stridulous, almost inarticulate sort of 
sound, very different from the speech of the living. — 
Bp. Lowth's Note on Isai. xxix. 4. 



NOTES 



ESSAY XI. 

(a) Heart-stirring particulars'] These particulars are 
kept constantly under our view by the excellent Liturgy 
of our Church. A passage of it, whose special object in 
such a detailed enumeration, is not perhaps generally 
understood, is thus illustrated by a truly Christian 
author : — 

" According to certain writers on moral philosophy, the 
motive which obliges the Christian, is the simple one of a 
certain expectation of future reward or punishment. They 
suppose only two persons, man and God; the Gospel 
interposes a third, the Son of God ; and this of course 
immediately gives a new complexion to the whole ques- 
tion. It is evident that, as to motive, the Christian 
cannot, dare not, look at everlasting happiness, without 
combining in the same view the cross of Christ. As con- 
sistently may he expunge from his creed every article 
intervening between God the Father Almighty, and the 
life everlasting. No ! that life he looks forward to, 
through along and permanent chain of objects, every link 
of which has been designed to move both his heart and 
understanding ; through his holy incarnation, through his 
holy nativity and circumcision, through his baptism, fast- 



NOTES. 189 

ing, and temptation, through his agony and bloody sweat, 
through his cross and passion, through his precious death 
and burial, through his glorious resurrection and ascension, 
and through the coming of the Holy Ghost. This is his 
perspective, down this long alley of glorious and heart- 
stirring facts, he contemplates the life to come ; and 
through this only, as a Christian that hopes for salvation, 
dares he look forward to everlasting happiness. On a 
basis so widely different from that proposed by the moral 
philosopher, rest the duties of the Christian, even where 
the former has borrowed the grand doctrine of eternal 
life ! " — R. W. Evans' Sermons on the Church of God, 
Sermon XIV. 

(b) Worked some miracle'] (Gen. iv. 15.) should be 
rendered " And the Lord gave Cain a sign, (that is, worked 
some miracle to convince him) that whosoever found him 
should not kill him." — Parkhurst. 

Under the head of miracles, I might have placed the 
congregating of the animals for admission into the ark ; 
for, though Geologists infer that the different tribes of the 
whole animal kingdom promiscuously inhabited every 
region in the antediluvian world, yet their assembling 
together for a particular purpose was evidently by means 
of supernatural agency ; the Rabbis call in the assistance 
of angels, as if they had read " Two of every sort shall be 
made to come, or brought, unto thee." 

Immediately before the destruction of Sodom, we know 
that the angel in person put forth his hand and pulled 
Lot into the house, and shut to the door against the 
violent and wicked men of the city ; and the same per- 
sonal care seems to have been shown in the preservation 
of Noah from the insulting violence of that corrupt gene- 
ration, for it is said " The Lord shut him in ;" that is, 



190 NOTES. 

God the Son, says Tertullian. advers. Praxeam. c. 16. 
All the appearances of God, or of the Angel of the Lord, 
to the patriarchs of the Hebrew nation were referred by 
the Jews to the Word of God or the Messiah ; the 
appearances of God in the old world to Adam, Cain, 
Noah, may be referred by analogy to the seed of the 
woman. 



NOTES 



ESSAY XII. 

(a) Noic before any shrub~\ Two not uncommon idioms 
are here combined in an unusual manner, and on tin's 
account seem hitherto to have escaped observation : 
(1.) D*"iD before, as in Josh. ii. 8. " Now, before they 
had lain down, she went up unto them on the roof." 
(2.) b"D evert/, in a negative sentence, means any, as in 
Exod. xx. 4. " Thou shalt not make to thyself any 
likeness." (Gen. iv. 15.) " That not any finding him 
should kill him." The same idiom ov irag derived from 
the Septuagint, obtains also in the Greek Testament : 
" Not any flesh shall be saved." (Mark xiii. 20.) " Not 
any one that saith unto me Lord, Lord." (Matt. vii. 21.) 
Non intrabit quisquam qui dicat. (1 Cor. i. 29 ; Heb. 
xii. 11, &c.) 

(b) The sceptical Voltaire~] Y a-t-il eu un temps ou le 
globe a ete entierement inonde ? Cela est physiquement 
impossible. — Voltaire, Diet. Phil. Art. Inondation. As 
an example of the other extreme, take the following state- 
ment : Newtonus, in hoc libro, telluris motse hypothesin 
assumit ; Autoris propositiones aliter explicari non pote- 
rant, nisi eadem quoque facta hypothesi. Hinc alienam 
coacti sumus gerere personam; cseterum latis a summis 
Pontificibus contra telluris motum decretis nos obsequi 
prontemur. — Jesuit's Preface to Newton's Principia, vol. 3. 



192 NOTES. 

(c) The electric fluid might undergo a change'] Perhaps 
some reference to this change is contained in the tradition 
preserved by Horace I. Od. iii. 27, that man's life began 
to be shortened by consumption and fever, when fire was 
first brought down from heaven in the days of Japet : — 



Audax Japeti genus 
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit : 

Post ignem aetheria domo 

Subductum, macies et nova febrium 

Terris incubuit cobors ; 

Semotique prius tarda necessitas 

Leti corripuit gradum. 



The variation in the weight of the atmosphere, and the 
changes which take place in its electrical state, contribute 
greatly to the formation of rain. " When he uttereth his 
voice (thunder), there is a multitude of waters in the 
heavens, ... he maketh lightnings with rain." (Jer.x. 13.) 
I should therefore suspect that lightning, as well as the 
rainbow, was a natural phenomenon unknown to the 
antediluvians. 

(d) Geological discoveries'] That the works of creation 
speak the same language as the revealed word of the 
Creator, is a moral certainty ; it is equally certain that any 
apparent discrepancy between them arises from the in- 
capacity of the interpreter in either case. Human know- 
ledge is constantly varying and gradually improving; it 
is therefore rash to make the physical researches of any 
age the test of Scriptural truth; as it is, on the other 
hand, to make the scriptural skill of any age the test of 
the accuracy of physical investigations. Our present 
astronomical opinions are not injurious to Christianity, 
though they were once pronounced heretical and subver- 



NOTES. 1 93 

sive of the faith ; and a certain geological theory, respect- 
ing the length of time necessary to convert different layers 
of lava into vegetable mould, was brought forward with 
the view of invalidating the Mosaic chronology, but its 
futility has since been shown and admitted. — See Bp. 
Watson's Apology in reply to Gibbon, p. 151. 

Some respectable works have lately appeared, whose 
avowed object it is to confine geological investigations 
within scriptural limits ; the attempt is undoubtedly well 
intended, but it is injurious to the cause both of scripture 
and of science. Let science declare her discoveries in 
moderate and sober language : Scripture need not fear the 
result. Physical truths will in the end be found to cor- 
roborate the word of God ; error will in due time fall to 
the ground and be forgotten. That great discovery of 
modern astronomy, namely, the stability of our system by 
the self-correction of its disturbing forces, affords a noble 
confirmation of such texts as Ps. xciii. 2. — " He hath 
made the world so sure that it cannot be moved ;" al- 
though, during the progress to this magnificent result, 
astronomy fell into many real errors, and seemed opposed 
to the above passage of Scripture in asserting the annual 
and diurnal revolution of the earth. Thus geology also, 
when its errors shall have been all forgotten, will eventually 
prove the willing handmaid of Revelation ; but in the 
mean time she must be left to her own efforts, and not be 
tied down by the letter of Scripture, which it would be 
mere arrogance to assert that we infallibly understand 
even on these points. 

The difficulty which geology encounters in the days of 
creation, bears some analogy to that which the days of 
prophecy offer with respect to their length. In Scrip- 
ture, events are foretold as about to happen at the expira- 



194 NOTES. 

tion of a certain number of days ; and when historical 
consistency does not admit of a literal application of the 
words, commentators, without incurring any blame, sub- 
stitute some longer period than one revolution of the 
earth on its axis. In the days of creation, physical facts 
lead scientific men to conclude that a longer time elapsed 
than twenty-four hours, and on the same principle they 
contend that the days indicate greater periods ; not that 
the Almighty was unable to complete all his work in six 
days or in a moment, any more than that he cannot bring 
to pass the events of prophecy within the specified number 
of days ; but that he has not willed it. There is certainly 
great discordance in the opinions of geologists, but so 
also is there in those of commentators. Thus in Dan. viii. 
14, the two thousand three hundred days are by some 
supposed to be literal days ; by others, prophetical years 
and those of various lengths, whether 365 days, or 360, 
or 354 ; and by Bp. Horsley, in particular, each pro- 
phetical day is considered equal to a period of seventy 
natural days. — See a posthumous paper in British Maga- 
zine, vol. iv p. 717. 

But it is said that the days of creation are so clearly 
defined by their natural division of evening and morning, 
as to leave no doubt of their literal meaning : " the even- 
ing and the morning were the first day." Now the very 
same remark applies to the prophetical days in the above 
passage of Daniel, of which the literal translation is 
" Unto two thousand and three hundred evening-morn- 
ings" vv\Qri[iepai. I am not here expressing a geological 
opinion, but am merely stating a point of scriptural criti- 
cism : namely, that a prophetical day, defined by an 
evening and a morning, is extended by commentators 
beyond a revolution of the earth on its axis. Many 



NOTES. 195 

errors are daily perpetrated both in geology and prophecy, 
and I have no wish to add to the accumulation ; but I 
would advocate the principle that a fair field be left open 
in both cases, and that an insuperable obstacle be not 
placed, in limine, to a moderate and Christian-like dis- 
cussion of physical discoveries. 

A second characteristic of the scriptural geology is the 
doctrine of the present submersion of the antediluvian 
continents. " The destruction of the primitive earth is 
a fact rooted in the very substance of the sacred Scrip- 
tures, and spreading its roots from the text of Moses to 
that of St Peter." — (Penn's Comparative Estimate.) 
" The Mosaic record informs us of the intention of the 
Almighty to destroy the antediluvian dry lands as well as 
their inhabitants. That great and awful judgment must 
have been occasioned by the gradual interchange of level 
between the former seas and lands ; and we are, conse- 
quently, now inhabiting the bed of the antediluvian ocean." 
(Fairholme's Geology of Scripture.) In defence of this 
position, the Scriptural Geology proceeds at the very 
outset to the very unscriptural act of cutting out four 
verses from the sacred text, namely, Gen. ii. II — 14. It 
is said that the descriptive part in the account of the 
Garden of Eden may have been originally annexed as an 
explanatory note, which was subsequently incorporated 
into the body of the work by the ignorance of some 
transcriber. Mr. Penn brings forward some probable 
reasons for supposing that John v. 4., concerning the 
angel that troubled the water, was such an incorporated 
gloss; and he would, therefore, strike out Gen. ii. 11 — 14. 
from the text, which, in his opinion, it evidently encum- 
bers. But this is opening too wide a door to scriptural 
emendation, and one which it would be very difficult to 

o 2 



196 NOTES. 

shut against the aggression of the adversary. For my 
own part, I consider those four verses not as a human 
gloss, but as an integral part of Scripture ; for I can dis- 
cover in them the moral purpose of enabling us to identify 
the land of Eden with the promised Canaan, and to con- 
template the most awful of all the instances of a Divine 
retribution : there is reason for supposing that in the 
place where the serpent deceived man to his fall, and 
where he bruised the heel of the promised seed, there also 
shall that seed of the woman bruise the serpent's head, 
and restore deluded man to his original intercourse with 
God. As long as the four verses in question shall con- 
tinue to form part of the sacred text, the inference of 
science on this point cannot be said to be at variance with 
the statement of the Bible. 

Mr. Fairholme is strongly opposed to the opinion of 
geologists, that a change of temperature took place at the 
deluge : " We must here pause one moment in our 
perusal of Cuvier's argument, to consider what effect 
would have been produced by this sudden formation of an 
icy bed, on the woods and jmigles through which this 
shaggy monster must naturally have been wandering, 
when embraced and sealed up by so sudden a disaster. 
The same element which had so preservative an effect 
upon his unwieldy carcase, must have entirely decomposed 
or evaporated the vegetable productions on which he fed ; 
as they are no where to be found in any part of the frozen 
regions, even preserved in ice" (p. 320) ; and he accounts 
for the presence of these elephants in the polar regions by 
means of the strong currents that prevailed at the deluge. 
At page 250, he gives instances of floating bodies carried 
by the currents from tropical regions to the north, par- 
ticularly of the mast of a British ship-of-war and a log of 



NOTES. 197 

mahogany, and then proceeds : " Having now found an 
agent by which floating bodies are naturally carried from 
a southern to a northern latitude, let us follow the course 
of any animal body, such as that of an elephant, when 
deprived of life in a southern latitude, and left to the 
influence of the natural currents of the ocean." But to 
make the case complete, let us suppose some of the ante- 
diluvian forest scenery matted together to accompany 
him; for (p. 233.) "we must feel satisfied, that, at the 
period of the deluge, the whole forest scenery of the 
globe, with the roots, branches, and foliage entire, must 
have been floated off" upon the waters, matted together in 
groups," &c. In this case, the same element which had 
so preservative an effect upon his unwieldy carcase, must 
have entirely decomposed or evaporated the vegetable 
productions that accompanied him ; as they are no where 
to be found in any part of the frozen regions, even pre- 
served in ice. Mr. Fairholme has started a real difficulty ; 
but it attaches quite as much to his own theory, as to that 
of Cuvier and Buckland. 

I am so far from fearing the discoveries of geology, that 
I rather see in it the hand of Providence for the confirma- 
tion of our faith. No one will now dispute that the best 
comment on the scriptural account of the flood is to be 
found in the records of this science ; and I think that the 
warmer climate and more humid atmosphere before the 
deluge, as pointed out by geologists, have a strong bearing 
on the length of human life, and the absence of the rain- 
bow among the Antediluvians. The gradual fulfilment 
of prophecy keeps up a continuing series of evidence to 
the truth of our religion; but, farther, I conceive that 
man's discoveries are so ordered as to develop new sources 
of evidence at the most fitting times. Thus geology, 



198 NOTES. 

which is but a science of yesterday, is available in estab- 
lishing the truth of the deluge : in confirming the fact of 
the Antediluvian length of life, by pointing out the pro- 
bable secondary causes : and in throwing light on the 
subject of the rainbow. So, again, the peopling of the 
present world from one family resident in the East, is 
greatly confirmed by the researches of philology, which 
has only lately been treated in a rational manner, 

" The Sanscrit language is of a wonderful structure : 
more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the 
Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bear- 
ing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots 
of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly 
have been produced by accident ; so strong, indeed, that 
no philologer could examine them all three, without be- 
lieving them to have sprung from some common source, 
which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar 
reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that 
both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a 
very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sans- 
crit : the old Persian may be added to the same family." 
Sir W. Jones' Dissertation on the Hindoos. 

" Our chief concern at present is with the Indo- 
European tribes. That term was designed to include a 
class of nations, whose dialects are more or less nearly 
related to the ancient language of India. This discovery 
was originally made by comparing the Sanskrit with the 
Greek and Latin. A very considerable number of words 
were found to be common to these languages, and a still 
more striking affinity was proved to exist between the 
grammatical forms respectively belonging to them. It is 
difficult to determine which idiom, the Latin or the 
Greek, approaches most nearly to the Sanskrit, but they 



NOTES. 199 

are all evidently branches of one stem. It was easily 
proved, that the Teutonic as well as the Sclavonian dialects, 
and the Lettish, or Lithuanian, which are in some respects 
intermediate between the former, stand nearly in the 
same relation to the ancient language of India. Several 
intermediate languages, as the Zend and other Persian 
dialects, the Armenian and the Ossete, which is one of 
the various idioms spoken by the nations of Caucasus, 
have been supposed by writers who have examined their 
structure and etymology to belong to the same stock. 
Thus a near relation was proved to subsist between a 
considerable number of dialects spoken by nations who 
are spread over a great part of Europe and Asia. It may 
be remarked, that the more accurate the examination of 
these languages has been, the more extensive and deeply- 
rooted their affinity has been discovered to be." Pritch- 
ard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. 

Was it by chance, or was it not rather for wise purposes, 
that such a language, after lying buried for so many ages, 
was brought to light in these latter times ? By it the 
European nations have been enabled to discover their 
common origin, although they had ceased to know or 
acknowledge their affinity at a period beyond the reach of 
history ! The population of Europe is now generally 
divided into four races — the Celtic, Teutonic, Pelasgic, 
and Sclavonic ; and their languages are shown to have a 
close connexion with the Sanscrit. Thus all the Eu- 
ropean nations are proved indubitably to have a common 
origin, and to have migrated from the East ; a fact which 
is in accordance with the inspired narrative, and is totally 
at variance with the natural idea of numerous distinct 
original races of mankind. This natural idea was univer- 
sally entertained by the ancients ; whilst the contrary 



200 NOTES. 

opinion of a common parentage has prevailed among the 
moderns, and principally (it would seem) on the authority 
of the Sacred History. 

The ancient prophecies concerning the latter days, 
which are now fulfilling, confirm our faith in that Being, 
who knows the end from the beginning ; and the modern 
discoveries of man, by illustrating the early annals of the 
world, afford a new means of authenticating the history of 
the Holy Record. 



THE END. 



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